Interior of Chartres 1926

Donald Shaw MacLaughlan made this print, Interior of Chartres, at some point in his career. Look at the web of lines here, how they build the space, the light, the weight of the architecture. It's all process, line by line. The way MacLaughlan coaxes atmosphere from simple marks reminds me of how we navigate the world: piecing together impressions, always in process. The stone columns, they’re not just standing there; they’re built from tiny, individual strokes, almost like he’s feeling his way around them in the dark. See that dark patch on the right? The hatching is so dense there, it almost feels like a solid object. MacLaughlan, who was working around the same time as Whistler and the Impressionists, had a similar fascination with light and atmosphere, but his mark-making feels more about construction, more about the physicality of seeing. It's a reminder that art, like life, is never finished, always becoming.