River Landscape 1956 - 1958

Dorothy Dehner made this etching, River Landscape, sometime in the last century. It's all in shades of grey, but don’t let that fool you. The composition pulses with the potential for other colours. Look at the way she's scratched and bitten into the plate. The marks are so distinct. There's a real sense of the hand, of the artist really wrestling with the material, that transforms the image into a landscape of the mind. It’s a real balancing act between representation and abstraction, isn't it? Check out the central section. See how the rectangles float in the midground? They remind me of Joan Miró, maybe a little Paul Klee. What I like most about those artists, and Dehner too, is how they managed to embrace ambiguity. Art doesn't have to be one thing, one meaning. It can be a jumping-off point for all sorts of ideas.