Fontamara XV 1947

This is Fayga Ostrower's "Fontamara XV," a black and white woodcut from 1947. I can almost feel Ostrower carving away at the wood, figuring out how to turn light into dark. The sky feels heavy, like a storm’s rolling in, and there are these little buildings huddled together at the bottom. I’m thinking about the push and pull, how the white spaces carve out shapes in the black. There is a flock of birds that looks like the white is eating into the black. The high contrast makes me wonder what it was like for Ostrower to create this. Was she trying to capture a feeling, a memory? There is something about black and white that feels raw and direct. It is a very personal and profound print. It’s like she’s saying, "Look, here’s what I see, what I feel." It is a reminder that art is a conversation, that one artist's work inspires another's, and that paintings are a form of expression.