Oklahoma Panhandle No. 3 1941

Ina Annette made this linocut print of the Oklahoma Panhandle sometime in the middle of the last century. I love the directness of the black and white image, which is parred back to just light and dark. Annette is taking the forms of nature and making them into something hard edged and abstract. The white space becomes shape, too, and the artist is thinking about her composition as a whole. It’s a real push and pull between the landscape she’s looking at and the design she’s making. I wonder what was going through her mind. Was she trying to capture the drama of the landscape or make something new? When artists make prints, they are in conversation with all the printmakers who came before them. It’s a beautiful thing.