Zwarte wolken

Kees Stoop made this print called 'Zwarte Wolken', or 'Black Clouds', and it's an etching, so there is an act of corroding the plate with acid, to bite into it. Looking closely, the image feels as if it’s not made, so much as found. The landscape has a windswept quality achieved by mark making that mimics the natural motion of growth and decay. You can see how the layering of thin lines gives the impression of movement, light, and shadow. What I find interesting is the tension between the density of the marks in the foreground and the relative sparseness of the sky. Those heavy darks below create a kind of grounding effect, making the sky feel even more expansive and full of light. You get a sense of the atmospheric conditions, it has some similarities to prints by Hercules Segers who was obsessed with rendering landscape. Ultimately, this work really reminds us that art is a conversation across time.