The Art House

[Sal]

Title:  Puddle
Artist:  M. C. Escher (yet another Dutchie?)
Created: February 1952
Description:  This is a woodcut print, so I think it's pretty rad to remember that any part of this piece with color was carved out of a block of wood.  Even all those pine needles.  I've always liked this one because it was like an Escher Lite; a lot of his artwork at this point was the weird staircases, infinite loops and tessellations, but this one was a more simplified version.  You still get various perspectives (looking down at the puddle versus flipping the print upside down and looking at trees growing upwards), but it's very nicely hidden in what looks to be an otherwise very normal still life/scenery sort of print.  I also like the subject matter; we had a lot of trees and muddy backroads that looked like this where I grew up, and it reminds me of that (despite the fact that I suppose this piece represents somewhere in The Netherlands.)