The First Sight of Jerusalem - Nebi Samwil, No.2 1920

This landscape print was made by James McBey. It’s called "The First Sight of Jerusalem" - Nebi Samwil, and when I look at it, I think about how the artist makes something come into being through a particular process. I imagine McBey outdoors with his etching tools, making marks in real time, trying to capture the light and the feeling of the place. It's all lines, lines, lines, scratched into the plate. The image is almost like a memory, a fleeting impression of a scene that’s both ordinary and profound. Look at the way he renders the figures in the foreground, they're like little blobs, almost disappearing into the landscape. And that dark smudge in the sky—is it a cloud, a bird, or just a bit of stray ink? I sympathize with the artist who is trying to get the exact right level of detail in the right places to convey the scene in his mind's eye. The work reminds me how artists are always grappling with these kinds of questions, working through ambiguity and uncertainty to find new ways of seeing and experiencing the world.