Desert Rain c. 1935

Theo Ballou White made this stone lithograph, Desert Rain, sometime in the 20th century, and it’s a beautiful example of how art can distill a moment into something timeless. The density of marks here, the way the rain is just a bunch of vertical strokes, it reminds me that artmaking is always a process of translation. Look at the layers of dark graphite, making the solid horizontal bands. You can almost feel the weight of the rain about to burst from the sky! The texture that White coaxes out of the stone, it's like you can feel the grit and the dampness all at once. See how the mountains in the distance are reduced to these simple, stark shapes? It’s almost like Agnes Martin, but with thunder! In the end, the piece suggests it’s not about rendering a landscape, but about capturing the experience of a desert rain. It’s about that charged, expectant moment right before the downpour.