Nobody Knows de Trouble I See 1943

Ruth Starr Rose made this lithograph, sometime in the middle of the 20th century. The paper seems to have been worked in layers, rubbed and smudged into being. It's a heart-rending image. I imagine Rose in her studio, stepping back, squinting, then leaning in again, coaxing the forms into existence, one mark at a time. I wonder what Rose was thinking as she drew each figure. It’s like a gospel song made visible. The textures create a smoky haze. Look at how the animals run around the burning house and the little details, like the smoke from the chimney, and the way the figures become the landscape, or the landscape becomes the figures, and how they kind of merge together. The softness of the figures contrasts with the hard edges of the building, creating tension. I see echoes of artists like Kathe Kollwitz in the use of charcoal, and the way that she evokes the suffering of the poor. The graphic nature of this artwork, its directness, creates an open and generous invitation for us to feel something. Artists are always learning from each other, building on the past, speaking across time. Painting is always a way of being in the world and creating a kind of embodied expression that embraces ambiguity and uncertainty.