The Departure c. 1931

Walter Dubois Richards made this print, The Departure, in black and white, and look, it’s all about boats. I love how the two-tone process really boils it down to only what is necessary. I imagine Dubois Richards carefully carving the design into a block, each cut a commitment. What was he thinking about as he worked? The quiet focus required to create such a high contrast image. It’s kind of like painting, but in reverse, isn’t it? Instead of adding colour, he's subtracting material, revealing the image through absence. The starkness reminds me a bit of woodcuts by German Expressionists. It's as if he’s trying to distill an essence, a feeling of movement and solitude on the water. The water itself is so still, but the boats are going somewhere. You can see the potential of the water to ripple. It's a conversation about the potential of line and mark-making, something all artists engage with, whether they know it or not.