Charon 1935

C. T. Nightingale made this woodcut, Charon, in 1935. The image has an amazing sense of depth, built with many small marks, like the kind of layering you do when painting a landscape. But this isn't paint, it's a print. I love how the texture of the surface is constructed with lines that build shapes and forms, like the small, choppy, repetitive strokes that build the dark mass of the landscape in the background. Then there are the longer horizontal lines that create the sense of the water, and the diagonal lines of the boat that pull our eyes to the figure of Charon. The artist really understands how all these lines are going to coalesce and become a picture. That lone figure in the background reminds me of the figures in Odilon Redon’s prints. Both artists create images that are kind of haunting, where symbolic figures exist in a dreamlike space. It’s all about mood and tone. In the end, the real beauty of this piece is that it stays mysterious, allowing for many stories to emerge.