The Year's at the Spring 1920

Harry Clarke made 'The Year's at the Spring' using ink and paper to create this incredibly detailed scene, a scene that looks like a stormy night or perhaps just a melancholic day. Look at how Clarke used line work to create depth and texture! I can imagine him hunched over his drawing table, meticulously hatching those tiny lines to build up the dark shadows and create this atmosphere of bleakness. Maybe he was feeling a bit like that lone figure in the bowler hat, lost in his own thoughts as he worked. It’s like Edward Gorey meets Aubrey Beardsley, isn't it? The way Clarke captured the swirling wind in the trees and the desolate road gives me the sense of a restless emotion brewing just beneath the surface. It reminds me of other drawings of a similar time. I think that artists continue to converse with each other, across time. Hopefully Clarke would like that. We’re all just trying to express the ambiguity and uncertainty of being alive, aren’t we?