Tivoli 1905

Donald Shaw MacLaughlan made this print of Tivoli in, well, we don't exactly know when, but it's rendered with a real sense of process, you can see how he's built the image up from a network of fine lines. There's a real emphasis on the materiality here, the way the ink sits on the paper. Look closely and you can see a myriad of tiny, etched lines – hatching and cross-hatching – that create a sense of depth and texture. These lines are the language of the artist, a script that describes the world but also reveals the hand that made it. See how the foreground is dense with scribbled marks, like a thicket of tangled thoughts, and how it opens up to reveal the architecture nestled in the hilltop. MacLaughlan’s work reminds me a little of Piranesi’s etchings, but maybe a bit less dramatic, a bit more gentle. Ultimately, this is an image that invites us to slow down, to look closely, and to appreciate the beauty of ambiguity.