Leeuw en leeuwin 1917

Bernard Willem Wierink made this image of a lion and lioness, sometime around 1917. It's a print, so you can imagine him working on the stone or plate, making marks that would eventually hold the ink. It's that process of layering and building up an image that always gets me. I love the way the surface looks almost like it's been drawn with colored pencils. You can see the individual strokes, especially in the ground and the lions’ fur. It’s not trying to be smooth or realistic, which gives it a kind of raw energy. Look at the way he’s used those reddish-brown tones throughout the print. It creates a sense of warmth and earthiness, like the lions are part of the landscape. And then there are those cooler grays and blues in the sky, which give the image some depth. I see something of Franz Marc in this piece, who also chose animals as his subject, and whose work similarly explored color and symbolic expression. It reminds us that art is never created in a vacuum. There's always someone else whose work resonates and inspires.