McCosh Walk 1942

This is McCosh Walk by Charles Wheeler Locke, made with graphite in 1942. It makes me think about what is recorded and what is not. You see the shadows cast by the trees, and the light making a path down the avenue. It’s as if he felt his way into this scene with light and dark, watching figures come into focus. I imagine Locke leaning over the paper, squinting, making marks, stopping to look again. The whole scene is built up of these tiny, delicate strokes. Look at the way the trees arch overhead, creating a cathedral of nature, and the figures dispersed throughout the picture plane, almost as if in conversation with each other, walking and talking, or just passing through. Locke must have found something magical in this everyday scene. When you look at a work like this you are witness to the artist's own experience and now part of that creative dialogue.