Sketch in La Roche 1905

This is David Young Cameron’s ‘Sketch in La Roche’, etched in monochrome on a small plate. Look at how Cameron approaches the image, he has a kind of architectural shorthand. There is a lot of implied detail but also a sense of leaving things unfinished. The magic is in the materiality. The drypoint is velvety, slightly rough to the touch, like old paper. Notice how the lines defining the timber frame of the building are not perfectly straight, they waver and break, giving the building a kind of organic, breathing quality, far from the solid geometry of architecture. There is this tension in the piece between an idea of solidity and the way the process opens that up. The way the shadow falls into the foreground almost feels as if the building is exhaling. It reminds me of Whistler or maybe Piranesi; art making is a conversation across time. There are no right answers, just different ways of seeing.