Saint Vincent Martyr 1925

M.C. Escher made this wood engraving of Saint Vincent Martyr using a painstaking process of carving lines into wood. It’s all about contrast here. Look at how the light carves out the body of the saint. The flowing lines almost feel like light radiating from the figure, the artist is making the invisible visible, it almost reminds me of Blake in that sense. The stark contrast between the black and white creates a powerful tension that brings a kind of dreamscape into focus. The eye is drawn into the contrast of the landscape, the dense black of the bird to the right almost threatening, its eye glinting in the light, to the calm village on the left. There’s a feeling of being suspended between worlds. I’m reminded of the graphic sensibilities of someone like Lynd Ward, but with a twist of Escher’s signature spatial trickery, its like an ongoing conversation across time. I love how this piece embraces ambiguity, encouraging us to find our own meanings.