Encounter 1940 - 1941

Isabel Bishop made this print, "Encounter," using etching, a method that's all about scratching lines into a metal plate. Look at the density of those lines and how they create areas of light and dark! I love the way it captures a fleeting moment between two people. You can almost feel the grittiness of the urban scene. The lines are so close together, so alive. I imagine Bishop hunched over her plate, pulling the needle across its surface, thinking about this meeting and the mood of the city. It’s like she’s not just depicting a scene, but also trying to evoke a feeling. The whole thing has this wonderful sense of intimacy, of capturing something real and unscripted. The way the figures are rendered with such care, yet the background fades into abstraction—that's painting! That's art!