Ye Old Dutch Church, Upper Saddle River, No. 2 1951

John Marin made this etching, Ye Old Dutch Church, Upper Saddle River, No. 2, using a plate. You know, that's a real process right there, working with metal and acid to find a picture. What grabs me about this image is how the lines are so alive, like the church is breathing. He hasn't labored over every detail. The essence of the church, the trees, the figure even, is all captured with these scribbly, energetic marks. It's as if the church is sketched into the air, into your mind. The slight tonality of the print gives a soft, atmospheric quality that makes it feel both old and immediate. It reminds me a little of some of Cy Twombly's drawings, that same sense of capturing movement and emotion with a kind of organized chaos. You can almost feel Marin's hand moving across the plate, deciding what to leave in, what to leave out. It's this beautiful dance between representation and abstraction, where the image exists as much in the marks as it does in the thing being depicted.