Fourth of July 1958

Jeannette Maxfield Lewis made this print called 'Fourth of July', and it’s a real firecracker of a picture, excuse the pun. The whole image vibrates with energy, thanks to these tight, nervous lines that build up all these marching figures and, of course, that huge drum! Look how she uses hatching to create depth and shadow, making the whole scene feel like it's about to burst off the page. It’s like a controlled frenzy, a real testament to the power of process, and the way she lets the marks build up really resonates with my own way of working. I keep thinking about the Italian Futurists when I look at this. There’s a similar drive to capture movement and speed. But where they were all about the machine age, Lewis brings a kind of handmade feel to it all. It reminds me that art's a conversation, artists riffing off each other across time, always finding new ways to see and feel the world.