Untitled (Abandoned Truck) 1931

This is James Brooks’ print of an abandoned truck, made with hatching and cross-hatching. It has all the intimacy of a drawing with the reproducibility of printmaking. You can almost feel the scratch of the tool on the plate. Brooks loves texture. Look at the way he builds up the image, line by line. The cloud above the truck becomes a tangle of marks, each one distinct and yet contributing to the overall mood. The truck itself is almost sinking into the field. See how the marks pull your eye back and forth between the abandoned vehicle, the landscape, and the sky. The whole thing feels like a dance. The print reminds me of Milton Avery. Avery often worked with simplified forms and a limited palette to capture the essence of a scene. Brooks is doing something similar here, but with a different set of tools. Both artists invite us to slow down, to look closely, and to find beauty in the everyday. They remind us that art is not about perfection, but about the process of seeing and feeling.