Provencal Landscape 1964

Frank Wright made this print of a Provencal landscape sometime in his life using etching. The image shimmers in greyscale. I imagine him bent over a copper plate, carefully drawing with a needle. I wonder what he was thinking about as he built up this scene, line by line? The horizon stretches far into the distance, a flat plane for the eye to rest on. In the foreground, the trees have a gnarled and bare beauty; each branch is rendered with a sensitivity for the natural world. There's a feeling of solitude, a sense of being alone with the landscape, like a memory. Wright invites us to contemplate the simple beauty of rural France. This piece echoes the work of other landscape artists, from Van Gogh to Cezanne, each with their own response to the Provencal countryside. It reminds us that artists are always in conversation with one another, building on the ideas of the past to create something new.