Staande maraboe 1884 - 1952

This is a print of a standing marabou by Reinier Willem Petrus de Vries. It's white on a muted green background, a bird caught in a moment of quiet repose. I can imagine the artist, Vries, carefully carving away at the block, each line a deliberate act of reduction. The negative space becomes the bird, its form emerging from the material through the artist’s hand. There’s something so appealing about the simplicity of the mark-making, the way the artist captures the essence of the bird with just a few lines. The texture, the grain of the wood, it all adds to the feeling that you’re witnessing a direct connection between the artist and the natural world. It makes me think about other printmakers, like Dürer or the Japanese Ukiyo-e artists, all engaged in this same process of translating observation into form. It's a reminder that art-making is an ongoing conversation across time and place, artists building upon the ideas and techniques of those who came before.