The Deacon's Shay 1946

Juliette Steele made this stone matrix print, called 'The Deacon's Shay' – I love the way she’s gone about making something on paper look rough, like it’s been scratched and scraped. There's a beautiful tension here between the graphic clarity of the abstract shapes, and the gritty texture of the stone. See how the dense blacks feel almost velvety, but they're also broken up by all this tiny, granular detail. Look at the right side of the image, where the solid black areas meet the paper; the contrast is so dynamic, it feels like the forms are simultaneously emerging from and dissolving into the background. It reminds me a little bit of Schwitters' collages, in the way it brings together these disparate elements to create a new kind of visual language, it’s all about the conversation between different forms and textures. Ultimately, art is about exploring possibilities. It's not about answers, it's about embracing the questions.