The Desert 1909

David Young Cameron made this etching, The Desert, at some point in his life, using fine lines to conjure a vast and empty scene. I love the way the light seems to hover over everything. I imagine Cameron, squinting in the sun, trying to capture the starkness of the landscape with his needle. Maybe he felt a kinship with those lone figures huddled in the distance. You know, there is a kind of quiet desperation in trying to represent something so immense and indifferent. It is a fool's errand, in a way, but a beautiful one. He probably wasn't thinking about being pretty. He was thinking about being true. And that, my friends, is what makes art worth looking at, and worth making. It’s a conversation across time, between one artist and another, and another.