The Bather 1919

Kenneth Hayes Miller pulled this etching, "The Bather," from a plate, no date given. It's all about these scratchy, linear marks that build up into the figure and the surrounding landscape. You can see him working and reworking the image, trying to find the form, like he’s searching for her. He is trying to evoke both a solidity and a sense of atmosphere with simple dark lines. What was he thinking when he made this? Was he thinking of Impressionism? Of Renoir's bathers perhaps? The lines create an almost palpable texture, as if you could reach out and feel the density of the ink on the paper. There’s a sensitivity here. You can tell that he is really paying attention to every single line. Painters are constantly in conversation with one another, building upon and responding to the ideas of those who came before, using their work as a platform to explore their own ideas. Painting is embodied thinking, always ambiguous and uncertain, embracing multiple interpretations rather than one single fixed idea.