Untitled (Primitive Sculpted Heads - Still Life) c. 1936

This is a print made by Robert M. Gatrell, but when or exactly how is a mystery to me. What strikes me is the way Gatrell piles objects – sculpted heads, a strange bowl, and what looks like a window – all in a heap. The process feels very intuitive. There’s a scratchy, almost frantic quality to the marks. He has a lot of different tones, from solid blacks to a lovely pale grey, and the texture feels a bit rough. He really uses this to describe form in a very tactile way. Look at the way he’s rendered the central head – notice the graininess of the print, almost like skin. There’s a real physicality to the work, a sense of the artist wrestling with the materials to bring these strange objects to life. This reminds me a bit of Picasso’s explorations of African masks. It’s as if Gatrell is also trying to tap into some kind of raw, primal energy. The print doesn’t offer any easy answers, but I think that’s precisely the point. Art isn’t about perfect renderings, it’s about opening up a space of possibility, of the unknown.