Conversation Piece 1959

Stow Wengenroth made this lithograph, "Conversation Piece," sometime in the mid-20th century, using stone, grease, and acid. It looks like he built up the image from light to dark, almost like he was coaxing it out of the ether. I can almost feel Wengenroth at the stone, carefully layering these subtle, almost pointillist marks. There’s something so tender about the scene. The gentle way the birds are rendered makes me think of an early morning walk in the woods, when everything is hushed and still. I imagine Wengenroth was drawn to the quiet beauty of nature. Think about Whistler's tonalist landscapes, there is something similar going on here, a sense of mood and atmosphere. In the end, all mark making is a kind of language, isn’t it? Wengenroth knew this and created a piece that is both deeply personal and universally relatable. It's a conversation, not just between the birds, but between the artist, the stone, and us.