First Etching [left panel] 1980

This is *First Etching* by Joel Fisher, and what strikes me is the way he coaxes the image into being. I wonder about the artist, hunched over his plate, gently coaxing it to reveal its secrets. Etching is like a dance, a back-and-forth between intention and accident. You lay down the ground, scratch in your lines, and then the acid takes over, biting into the metal, transforming your marks in unpredictable ways. Maybe he was thinking about Agnes Martin and the subtle grid, but with more chance operations. Look closely, you can see the ghost of a rectangle. The tone is so faint, it's barely there, like a memory. It's all about texture here. The way the paper catches the light, the subtle variations in tone. It reminds us that painting is a physical process, an embodied act. Fisher's work connects to a longer history of mark-making, artists who use repetition and subtle variation to create a kind of visual music. And it reminds us that painting is always a conversation, an ongoing exchange of ideas and gestures across time.