Vermont Farmhouse 1925

J. J. Lankes made this woodcut print, Vermont Farmhouse, in 1922. I’m thinking about the process of slowly carving away at the block. It’s the kind of labor that demands a different kind of seeing. Look at the dense horizontal strokes that suggest the sky; they’re so different from the marks used to describe the shaded areas in the grass. There is such care given to each individual mark; like the whole picture plane is a field of energy. It's so different from a painting where you can just smear things around. I wonder what Lankes was thinking about when he made it? Maybe of other printmakers, like Dürer? Maybe he was thinking about the history of landscape? When we look at art we engage in an ongoing conversation across time. Artists inspire one another. We can learn so much from what other artists have done, whilst bringing our own perspective to it. It’s all up for grabs.