A Lino Print Challenge

My May calendar pageHere is an interesting attempt to capture the most ethereal of atmospheric events in the most unsuitable medium imaginable: lino-print! I wonder what were the daunted thoughts running through the artist’s head when he or she received this brief! Or perhaps they relished the challenge.

If not for the title however, one might wonder if this was a bushfire, the ambiguity suggested by the artist choosing to silhouette black trees against a white and orange sky. It made me wonder how it would look inversed – look at the result below: a much more literal impression of the Aurora Borealis. I wonder what the artist would think of this?

One person on Good Reads has awarded five stars to Northern Lights (published in 1909), and describes these inspiring stories as ‘lives and loves of the past’. Sir Horatio Gilbert George Parker (1862–1932) was a well-travelled Canadian novelist and British politician, who even made it as far as Australia where for a while he was an associate editor for the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. He is best known however for his stories about the history and lives of French Canadians, which are reputed to be ‘fine quality, descriptive and dramatic’.

May you all enjoy a fine quality May.