Picture in Focus: The Apple by Helen Siegl

October 9, 2016

Picture in Focus: The Apple by Helen Siegl

My featured American print this week from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection is a color woodcut by Helen Siegl, an Austrian-born graphic artist who spent most of her life in the U.S. Biblical themes feature prominently in her work. Siegl considered her art-making as a form of Christian service, making her prints readily available for reproduction in church bulletins. Her new color woodcut, The Apple, shows the serpent offering the forbidden fruit to Eve in the Garden of Eden. The thoughtful expression on Eve's face suggests she has some inkling of the disastrous events that will follow her fateful choice. This new Eden image joins another print of the Fall and illustrations from the book, Adam and Eve, by Gwendolyn Reed in the image gallery of the Helen Siegl profile page in the Sacred Artists section. (John Kohan)