Zinnias 1924

Lionel Lindsay made this print of Zinnias. I’m looking at these flowers in a pot, all these different types of marks he’s made, figuring out how to render the light, how to make them glow. I imagine him thinking, how can I convey the roundness and the delicacy of those petals just through black and white marks? And isn't that what mark-making is all about, really? How do you create a sensation, an illusion, a feeling? I can imagine him shifting and adjusting, responding to what’s on the plate. It’s like he is asking himself, what does it mean to capture something real, like the weight of the flowers, the delicate forms? And what happens when that reality meets the symbolic space of art? It is a conversation between the artist and the world. Each mark is a thought, a question, a tiny attempt to get closer to some kind of truth. We might not know what that truth is exactly, but the process of seeking it, that's where the real juice is, right?