Zwei Nackte Frauen (Two Nude Women) c. 1926

Moissey Kogan made this woodcut, Zwei Nackte Frauen, and it's a lesson in how much feeling you can wring out of black ink and paper. I can feel Kogan's hand in this. It's like he's wrestling with the block, making these two women emerge from the darkness. They sit, lost in thought, maybe pondering the meaning of it all under that scrappy little tree. You know, the kind of tree that looks like it’s seen some things. I wonder if Kogan was thinking about Gauguin and those Tahitian babes, or maybe even Picasso's ladies. There's something so immediate about woodcuts; you have to commit, carve away everything that isn't the thing you want to show. Makes me think about what I choose to put in my paintings, what I leave out. We’re all just hacking away at the world, trying to make sense of it, one mark at a time.