Highway West 1941

John O’Neil made this print, Highway West, in 1941; it’s a woodcut, and you can really see that in the bold graphic nature of the image. What strikes me is the contrast between the solid black and the raw paper, which really simplifies the landscape. It's the kind of reduction you get when you're carving, deciding what to keep and what to cut away. There's something about the way O'Neil uses these blocks of black and white that almost flattens the scene, but then he throws in these little details – look at the stippling along the road or on the front of the mounds, and the rough texture of the clouds in the distance, which gives it depth. I love how the shovel in the foreground leads your eye into the open space beyond. It's like O'Neil is saying there's work to be done, but also a vista to be explored. You can see some similar graphic sensibilities in the prints of someone like Rockwell Kent, who also used stark contrasts to evoke a sense of place. Art's like a conversation, right? Everyone's chipping in, trying to make sense of the world in their own way.