Fantasie vogels boven een rivierlandschap 1904

Hans Thoma made this etching, Fantasie vogels boven een rivierlandschap, showing fantasy birds over a river landscape, where the marks feel scratched and bitten into the plate, like worry lines. The artist, hunched over his plate, maybe he’s thinking of landscapes he’s seen but never quite captured. The birds overhead squawk and claw, and behind them, smaller birds float on the breeze. Look at that tail! Those tendrils. It makes me think of my own process, trying to wrangle feeling into form, like grabbing smoke. He probably felt that too. You can see how he is trying to capture these impossible, imaginary birds, trying to make them soar through the world. You know? Other artists do this too. Like Guston, even. We see things, we try to bring them to life. Thoma’s birds sing to me—of the messy, beautiful struggle to make something out of nothing. And really, that’s the song of every artist, isn’t it?