Toren van de Grote Kerk in Breda 1888 - 1934

Willem Adrianus Grondhout created this etching of the Tower of the Grote Kerk in Breda using delicate, scratchy lines. I bet he worked on the plate, reworking it, wiping it, and re-etching it. The neutral palette and marks feel very intimate and immediate. I imagine him outside, on location, trying to record what he saw. How did he decide what to include? Which parts of the scene did he decide to leave out? It's a reductive process, which I think is really interesting. The etching seems to emerge from an intuitive process of layering and refining, as if searching for the essence of the scene. I feel a sense of kinship with Grondhout and his endeavor. As artists, we’re always in conversation with one another, learning from the past, building upon it. This sharing of ideas makes artmaking so exciting.