Bos 1887 - 1952

Chris van der Windt made this artwork, ‘Bos,’ with a drypoint technique sometime in the early 20th century. I can almost feel the scratch of the needle on the plate. Imagine him, bent over this small rectangle, pressing and pulling, coaxing an image from the metal. There are so many dark lines that evoke the density of a forest, but also a sense of light filtering through the trees. It’s less about seeing, and more about feeling the woods. There's an interesting conversation happening here between tonal darkness and illumination, chaos and order. Van der Windt has made the white of the paper glow. It makes me think about the work of other landscape artists like the Barbizon school painters. All of us painters are in this ongoing exchange, aren’t we? Trying to capture something elusive about the world.