Work and Play

Dawn comes to Northeastern Brazil, where the farm is bustling with activity in this naif portrait by Ivan Borges. The cow is milked, chickens fed and water fetched from the river where an industrious young man is fishing. Everyone gets an early start to avoid the midday heat.

Afterward there is time for play as a couple dallies in a hidden countryside bower in the shade of a cashew tree. Birds serenade them and a lizard watches curiously. Suggesting the Garden of Eden, a serpent slithers up the tree trunk.

Ivan Borges works in the woodcut technique, transferring the images to ceramic and framing both in a single composition.

Titled 'Amanhecer na Fazenda' and 'Namoro do Matuto,' in Portuguese.