Bain d'ombre 1959

Jean Dubuffet made this moody print, Bain d'ombre, at some point in his career and you can see straight away that he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. I imagine him, working on the plate, building up layers of tone, maybe wiping away and adding back, letting the image emerge from the dark. There's something so physical about it, like he's wrestling with the material, trying to coax something out of it. You can almost feel the grit and texture of the surface. It reminds me a little of Twombly, but with a darker, more brooding energy. I wonder what he was thinking about when he made this? Was he trying to capture a feeling, a memory, or just the raw sensation of being alive? Maybe that's what all artists are doing, really – trying to make sense of the world, one mark at a time. And we viewers? Well we're just trying to catch the vibe, like eavesdropping on an old conversation between artists.