"Oak Tree Sonoma" Expressionist Black & White Wood Block by Byron Randall
This strong image of a tree in Sonoma is a wood block by Byron Randal.A predominantly figurative artist, Randall experimented with abstraction in the 1940s, and again in the 1980s and 1990s. Throughout his career, he produced still-life, portraits, nudes, and landscapes, in oil, watercolour, gouache, pastel, and print. He also developed plaster sculptures and three-dimensional collages on the theme of the sea (a recurrent interest). Randall''s concern for social justice ran throughout his career. It was most explicit in art from the 30s through to the 50s, such as his 1947 ''Diabolical Machines'' print (held in numerous museums), his Spanish Civil War painting (at Hallie Ford Museum), and his prints of dispossessed Jews from the ghettos of Eastern Europe (at LA Museum of the Holocaust), created from firsthand observation.Randall''s art revels in the joyful, sensuous, and whimsical aspects of everyday life. It celebrates both male and female nudity, and the hedonistic satisfactions of l