Landscape With Solitary Man 1932

Leon Kelly made this etching, Landscape With Solitary Man, in 1932, pulling thin lines out of a plate, scratching into its surface with some sort of sharp tool. I’m thinking about the artist, alone, maybe with a coat and scarf, bent over the plate, his breath fogging the air. Working line by line, Kelly builds up an image of the weather, the wind, the low light; it's all about the feeling of being in a landscape. I suppose the solitary man is the artist himself, or maybe it’s just someone going for a walk. There’s a vulnerability in that small figure, but also a kind of groundedness; it must be comforting to be surrounded by all those trees. The artist makes marks, and then we react to them, we project into them; the plate becomes the space where the artist and the viewer meet. The history of painting is one of endless reinvention, each artist responding to, and building upon, the ideas of those who came before.