The Two Pines, Switzerland 1908

Donald Shaw MacLaughlan made "The Two Pines, Switzerland" using etching techniques, resulting in a monochromatic symphony of blacks and grays. It’s like he’s wrestling with light and shadow, isn’t it? I imagine him, bent over the plate, coaxing those lines into existence. It's all about that dance between control and accident, a push and pull. The way the trees reach up into the sky, they're almost yearning, while the clouds billow with a life of their own. There's a vulnerability in the marks, a fragility that speaks to the fleeting nature of the landscape itself. Thinking about other printmakers like Whistler or Piranesi, MacLaughlan seems part of this ongoing conversation about how we capture a sense of place, but, you know, in our own imperfect, human way. Each of these lines holds a trace of his hand, his eye, his breath.