Oracle Mountains, Arizona 1957

Leo Meissner made this drawing of the Oracle Mountains in Arizona using what looks like graphite or charcoal on paper. I’m imagining Leo standing outside with his pad, squinting up at these mountains as he attempts to capture their mass and form. The stark light creates such dynamic contrasts. There is such a sensitivity in the marks describing the rockface. The landscape has been rendered with so much care – you can see the time he took over it, rubbing and layering the marks to build up depth and texture. Even the sparse desert scrub seems to have been captured with the same attention. I can almost feel the dry desert air. I wonder who else Leo was looking at? Was he thinking about Cezanne when he made this? Or maybe he was more into the American transcendentalists like Church or Bierstadt? Whatever the case, you get the sense of an artist deeply engaged with his materials, his subject matter, and with the history of image-making itself. And that’s what makes a work like this so compelling.