Old Church, Veere 1933

This linocut of an old church was made by Dorrit Black sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. It’s such a striking image, isn't it? The colour palette is dominated by earth tones - ochre, greens, browns - while the architectural shapes are strong and simplified. I can imagine Dorrit standing there, maybe on a windy day, simplifying what she sees into blocks and planes. Did she start with a drawing, or did she dive straight into carving the linoleum? I love how she renders that field in the foreground with these rhythmic, vertical strokes – it’s so flat and decorative, yet it also suggests depth and perspective. Then there's the shadow on the church wall. It gives the building a sense of volume and mass, while also flattening it into a graphic motif. It’s like she’s playing with abstraction while still capturing the essence of the place. She must have looked at work by the cubists and other modernists to get to this point. You know, we artists, we’re always building on what came before, riffing on each other’s ideas and techniques.