Twee vrouwen met een schaal met fruit op hun hoofd op Bali 1911

This is a scene of Bali etched by Wijnand Otto Jan Nieuwenkamp, but without a date we are left to imagine when it was made. I see the artist bent over a plate, coaxing lines from the metal, trying to conjure the thickness of the jungle canopy. A whole world captured in brown monochrome! There is a particular kind of attention here, in the layering of line, the artist trying to capture the weight of the foliage as it droops down the edge of the frame. I wonder if Nieuwenkamp was thinking of the German Expressionist printmakers? Perhaps Kathe Kollwitz? Two figures walk in the distance, and I bet Nieuwenkamp was drawn to the rhythm of their labor, the balance of the fruit on their heads. Perhaps like him, they too are trying to transform the mundane into something beautiful. We artists are always in conversation, translating the world into our own visual languages.