Silent Seasons - Spring 1971

Will Barnet’s print, Silent Seasons - Spring, invites us into a quiet moment of contemplation. It’s all clean lines and calm yellows, blacks, blues and greens, printed to create flat surfaces, almost like a collage, but with the slightly faded feel of screen printing. The woman in the foreground smells a flower and seems to be communicating with the parrot at the window, or maybe she’s just enjoying a moment of peace with the window open. I can imagine Barnet, an artist so devoted to his craft, carefully considering each element—the angle of the woman's gaze, the texture of the parrot’s feathers, the placement of the record player on the table. It is a kind of magic to capture this moment, and to hold it still. Silent Seasons echoes the work of many artists who are concerned with the emotional resonance of everyday life, and inspires me to think about the way images accumulate meaning over time. They become a form of embodied expression, and allow for multiple interpretations.