the New Pantagruel

Death and Transfiguration: An Interview with Barry Moser

by Barry Moser

arry Moser of Pennyroyal Press is best known as the designer and illustrator for the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible, a limited, 400-copy, hand-letterpress edition of the Authorised (King James) Version that took 5 years to complete. Prior to becoming a bookmaker, Moser had an interest in biblical studies and held a preacher’s license in the Methodist church.

A few of Moser’s illustrations for the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible appear with this interview and other texts in this issue of tNP. They have described in Newsweek as “engravings with the brooding power of magical realism.” Moser’s Pennyroyal Caxton Bible artist proof prints are currently showing at Signs of Life Gallery in Lawrence, KS, and are available for purchase through the gallery. At a recent showing there, Moser answered questions asked about his work.

The New Pantagruel:

How would you describe the style of your Biblical engravings? Does that style reflect a particular view of the Scriptures?

Barry Moser:

Style is a tricky term for me. I can look at the whole of my work and see, over the span of decades, a change in style, but I am not sure that this means much more than a record of my learning how to do what I do. If we look for style in terms of content and we look at a more recent cross-section of my work I see an obvious tendency towards the dark and the grotesque, of death and transfiguration — most of my work for children’s books to the contrary. If, on the other hand we are looking for “style” in terms of the “look” of the work I will also have to fall back on “dark.” But in this case it is the nature of the medium that proffers that darkness, not my intention or personality. Wood engraving is a dark medium, period. And when I make watercolors I tend to work, not as the old traditions have it (from light to dark), but from dark to light. Somebody once commented in the New York Times that my watercolors have “the intellectual muscle of the burin.” I take this to be an affirmation that both media, as I use them — and especially engraving — are literary media and lend them selves happily and naturally to illustration.

If I have a particular view of the Scriptures it would be as literature, and in the main, dark literature. This is not to say that I am unmindful of the overarching redemption and light that the Scriptures offer to those that seek it. Again, it’s largely a matter of death and transfiguration.

The New Pantagruel:

How do you see yourself in relationship to the tradition of Western art? Are there influences on your work that come from outside this tradition?

Barry Moser:

In terms of spontaneity, of seizing the happy accident, of thinking of myself as merely a part of the whole process, of having unusually high regard for my tools and materials, and of seeing my work as a part of some purpose more important than my own ego, then yes, I do see myself outside the typical Western tradition. I am not sure it’s exactly Eastern, but it sure as hell ain’t Western, at least as I understand that term.

However, in that there is a strong narrative mode in my work, I see myself very much a part of the Western tradition, especially that period from the early Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century. Most of what happened after that leaves me pretty cold — with marvelous and wonderful exceptions like Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko and too many others to mention. I do not, however, belong to their tradition except in that we all share a commonality in some Eastern thought.

In either case, it’s not something I brood over. I just get up in the morning and get down to work. “Work, work, work,” as my friend Donald Hall often says. That is the ethic I subscribe to and the tradition to which my mind, hands, heart, and soul belong.

The New Pantagruel:

Can you describe how your art gives viewers the opportunity to see an old text with new eyes or experience the familiar as unfamiliar?