Kerrera, No. II 1912

David Young Cameron made this etching of Kerrera, in which he used drypoint to create a scene with very few lines. It’s so spare, almost ghostly, like a memory surfacing. I can imagine him, can you?, carefully scraping away at the plate, deciding what to leave in, what to take out. Like a sculptor, really. The lines he chose—they have a real sense of purpose. They define those imposing cliffs, hint at the water’s edge. And that little house nestled in the landscape! It’s almost an afterthought, a tiny human mark against the vastness of nature. It makes me think about other artists, like Whistler, who were also trying to capture the mood of a place with such economy. It’s like they’re all in conversation across time, isn’t it? Artists seeing and interpreting and re-interpreting the world for us.