Jess c. 1935

Merritt Mauzey made this lithograph called "Jess" using grease crayons on a stone, before printing it onto paper. I’m thinking about Mauzey there in his studio, hunched over the stone, breathing heavily. It’s a whole physical thing to make a print. You have to grind the stone down to make it flat; you have to apply the grease crayon to make the image. I love the way he shows you everything, like a stage set, with all the props. It gives you a sense of a life lived close to the land, with all its bits and pieces. There’s a casualness to the way everything is just placed there, not quite organized. It’s interesting because you can see some influence from Regionalist painters like Thomas Hart Benton or Grant Wood. But Mauzey has his own thing, right? It’s like he’s saying something about rural life, but he’s not making a big deal about it. He's just showing it like it is. It is interesting to observe how artists speak to each other through time.