Untitled (Hauling Out a Log) c. 1935

This is an etching, made by William J. Scott sometime before 1940, showing several men hauling a log. It’s not a painting, of course, but it looks like one, and the same principles apply. See how the bodies are built up with a mass of short, sharp lines? I can imagine Scott hunched over his plate, pushing that burin through the metal, again and again, building up tone, describing muscles straining, the rough surface of the log and the earth. It’s all about labor here, the labor of the men, and the labor of the artist, too. You can feel the artist’s breath on the plate, the way the etched lines are made darker by wiping ink into them, so that the figures emerge from the light of the paper. You know, a lot of what artists do, and what printmakers do, is just hard work, not so different from hauling logs, I suppose, only with an image as the end result.