Lobsterman's Cove 1941

Stow Wengenroth’s ‘Lobsterman’s Cove’ is a lithograph, so it’s made with grease on a stone, and the whole thing is about pressure. Look how he coaxes all those different shades of grey from the surface. It’s about layering, mark-making, all the decisions, and the cumulative effect of those decisions. You can almost feel the textures in this print, the roughness of the wooden planks, the prickly pine needles, and of course, all those rocks. See how the shadows describe their shapes? If you zoom in on the rocks at the front, you can really see how the light catches them. Each mark is like a little world in itself. The whole image is built up from these tiny marks. Wengenroth reminds me of someone like Edward Hopper, another artist who found beauty in the everyday. Both artists speak to this ongoing conversation about how we see and experience the world around us. They aren't trying to give us answers, just asking us to look closer.