The City under the Black Mountain 1912

Joseph Pennell made "The City under the Black Mountain," using the blackest of inks to suggest this massive, seemingly infinite space of mountain ranges, gorges, and rocky outcrops. I imagine Pennell looking out and just feeling tiny, but then thinking, "Okay, I'm going to try and capture this." Look how the strokes of ink vary – in some places, they're like quick, nervous scratches, and in others, they're more deliberate and dense, building up the weight of those dark cliffs. It's like he's wrestling with the hugeness of the landscape, trying to pin it down on paper. The texture is amazing; you can almost feel the roughness of the stone, the vastness of the sky. And that city… nestled there in the light, what’s that about? It feels so vulnerable against the dark, looming mountain. Totally strange. I wonder if he felt dwarfed by it all, yet compelled to try and make sense of it through mark-making? It makes me want to pick up a brush and get lost in my own landscape of ink and paper.