Fifty Cents a Hundred 1940

This lithograph on paper called, Fifty Cents a Hundred, was made in 1940 by James Baare Turnbull. You can tell this wasn’t a walk in the park to make, the artist has really dug in deep, using sweeping lines to give the piece movement. I can imagine Turnbull, hunched over this stone, carefully layering tone upon tone. Look at the way he’s rendered the figures working the land. There's something about the angle of their bodies, the way they seem to blend into the earth that makes me think about the physical toll of labour. The lines on the road create this strange sense of perspective. He creates an image of the vast, flat land. It's like he's saying something about the relationship between people, the land, and the economy. I am reminded of Kathe Kollwitz, they both share the desire to highlight social issues in their work. It feels like an echo of the past, a reminder of the struggles and stories etched into the very fabric of our world.