Scholastica 1931

M.C. Escher pulled this scene from a block of wood, and already I’m imagining what it might have been like to carve away the surface. The image emerges through trial, error, intuition. I imagine the artist looking around at the world, turning it upside down, inside out, and backwards. The landscape he presents is a pretty scary one, like being in a nightmare—a world of snakes and glaring cats. But I sympathize, ‘cause it can be hard to make a world, right? It takes a lot of effort and thought. This image feels carefully constructed. All the animals and the trees fit so nicely together. I can see him sanding the surface and thinking hard about the composition of the image, what he wants you to see, what the experience is. Still, despite the scariness, the carefulness, I think it's pretty great. Maybe there’s something about accepting the animals inside your own head. The animal in us. That’s what makes the world keep turning.