Winnowing Wheat 1937

John Sloan made this etching, Winnowing Wheat, sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. Look at that web of lines, that hatching and cross-hatching, which almost feels like it’s vibrating off the surface. You can see the labor that went into building up the image in layers. The thing that really grabs me is the way Sloan renders the woman's skirt with these dense, almost frantic strokes. They give it weight, a real material presence, but also a sense of movement, as though she is caught in mid-action. See how this contrasts with the smoother, more even tones of the adobe buildings behind her? There’s a tension created between the figure and the ground, the active and the passive. Sloan reminds me a bit of Käthe Kollwitz, another printmaker who wasn’t afraid to get down and dirty with the grit of everyday life. Neither artist shies away from ambiguity.