King Charles in Whitehall c. 1929

This image of King Charles in Whitehall by William Walcot is an etching, a dance of delicate lines and tones pulled from a metal plate. I imagine Walcot, bent over his workbench, coaxing these ghostly figures and grand architecture into being. The etching medium allows for a kind of precise chaos. See the way the lines swarm to create the texture of the building. It's a surface both solid and dissolving. I can almost feel the scratch of the needle on the copper. There's a real push and pull here between representation and abstraction. This push-pull reminds me of Piranesi, another printmaker, who had a similar obsession with architecture. Artists are always in dialogue, you know, echoing and answering each other across time. And ultimately, it's this conversation, this act of making and seeing, that keeps the spirit of art alive.