Penelope 1956

Benton Spruance made this lithograph called Penelope and what strikes me is the way he coaxes so much depth from black and white. It feels like an etching, yet it’s all litho crayon and ink. Look at the lines forming Penelope's web, those marks feel so deliberate and charged, like she is weaving or unweaving her destiny, thread by thread. Then notice how the web continues into the rest of the scene, blurring the distinction between inside and out. That tension, between surface and depth, is really what makes this print so intriguing. It's a push-pull, a dance between the known and the unknown. Spruance reminds me of Jacob Lawrence, in the way he manages to distill these ancient, mythological themes into something so modern, so immediate, so human.