Flowers Maxwell Str. Market 1930

William Jacobs made this linocut print called "Flowers Maxwell Str. Market" and it's a bustling scene rendered in stark black and white. I can almost feel the artist carving into that linoleum, wrestling with the material to bring this scene to life. He must have stood at that market watching the transactions going on, observing the faces and the way the light fell on the flowers, and then transferring all of that into these bold cuts. Each line feels deliberate, carving out the shapes of the flowers. I imagine Jacobs, maybe a bit like me, finding so much in the everyday. There's a sense of connection, a way of seeing and feeling the pulse of the city. It makes me think about artists like the German Expressionists, who were also drawn to the energy of urban life, trying to capture it with similar expressive lines. Looking at this I can see a common thread that unites artists across time, each one speaking through their marks and images.