City Dog Howling at the Moon 1979

Richard Basil Mock carved this woodblock print ‘City Dog Howling at the Moon’ in 1979, using black ink on paper. There’s a dog smack-bang in the middle of this print, its head thrown back in a howl. I love how it’s perched right on the edge of a building. It's like he’s trying to make sense of it all, just like us. He’s howling at a full moon while the other animals are indoors: even the poor goldfish in the glass bowl. I can almost feel the artist digging into the wood, carefully crafting each line to bring the scene to life. Mock's print reminds me of Otto Dix or maybe even some of the German Expressionists. There’s that same feeling of urban alienation, that sense of unease. Artists like Mock show us that art can be more than just pretty pictures. It's a way of grappling with the big questions, expressing the messy, complicated stuff that's hard to put into words. And that, my friends, is why art matters.