Tornado 1971

Joe Goode made this lithograph, "Tornado", and you can see how he's interested in process. The textures and gradations are everything. It’s pretty dark, but you can make out these delicate, almost ghostly marks. They build up to suggest this powerful funnel, but it's also wispy and ethereal, like a memory. Look at the way the light seems to catch the bottom edge of the tornado. It's a subtle shift in tone, but it really pops the image forward. It's like Goode is using light itself as a material, sculpting it across the surface. I love how he embraces the inherent qualities of lithography, that grainy texture and the way the ink sits on the paper. It reminds me a little of Vija Celmins' prints, that same focus on tone and texture to create these almost hyper-real images from a limited palette. For me, this piece is not just about representing a tornado, but about capturing the feeling of one, that mix of awe and maybe a little fear.