Tobacco Road 1944

Philip Burnham Hicken made this print, Tobacco Road, and what grabs me right away is the way he simplifies everything into these shapes and blocks of color. It's like he's saying, "Here's the basic stuff, the bones of the landscape." Look at the house, for example. It's tilted and almost cartoonish, but the colors, that muted blue and the warm brown of the land, feel so real. The way the colors are laid down, flat and almost grainy, makes me think about the physical effort of making a print. It's not trying to trick you into thinking it's a photograph; it's all about the process. My eye keeps going back to that small cloud in the distance, a horizontal splodge of color. It echoes the shape of the road and the roofline of the house. It's all connected, a web of color and form. Like Marsden Hartley, Hicken finds poetry in the everyday, turning a simple scene into something quietly profound. It’s a reminder that art isn’t about perfect representation, it's about seeing the world in a new way.