Portret van Lijs Bus 1916

In 1916, Julie de Graag made this woodcut, ‘Portret van Lijs Bus’, and it's now hanging in the Rijksmuseum. Looking at this image, it's the density of the marks, and the pure blacks and whites that first strike me. Imagine Julie, with her tools, carefully gouging out the wood, line by line. It’s intense, right? And I imagine she felt the weight of representing another person in such stark terms. See how the lines on her face aren’t just marks, but also shadows, history, lived experience. I can almost feel the texture of the wood, smell the ink, and hear the scrape of the blade. It reminds me of other printmakers like Käthe Kollwitz, who also used the medium to convey raw human emotion. It’s like Julie’s having a conversation with them, across time, about how we see and feel each other. It's a beautiful, ongoing exchange.