Bij Bommerig (Z. Limburg) 1930

Otto Hanrath made this print of Bij Bommerig in Z. Limburg using etching and aquatint. Looking at the massed marks, I imagine Hanrath building up the image through layers of tiny strokes. You know, the patient accumulation of detail when you’re trying to capture a scene, like a quiet conversation between the artist and the landscape. I can almost feel the scratch of the etching needle on the plate, the acid biting in, each line a whisper of intention. He really captures the sense of looking out over a landscape, the way the eye leaps from foreground to the horizon. The dark, tangled thicket in the foreground gives way to a more open, cultivated middle ground, and then the soft, hazy hills in the distance. The light in the sky feels heavy and pregnant, maybe just before a storm? It puts me in mind of other landscape artists who grapple with nature, trying to translate its complexity into marks on a surface. In the end, all that mark-making adds up to something bigger than just representation. It becomes about feeling, about being present in a place, and sharing that experience with others.