Zittende vrouw 1875 - 1950

This etching, of a seated woman, by Maria Hubrecht, has a quiet, searching quality. You can see Hubrecht felt her way into the image, line by line. There's a kind of delicacy to the figure, made up of thin, translucent layers of ink. It's hard to tell what kind of tool she used, but my guess is some sort of dry point. The surface is almost chalky, and the lines fade in and out. I’m drawn to the way the lines cluster and scatter around the face and headdress. It reminds me of a similar approach you can see in the works of Paula Modersohn-Becker, both artists seem to be searching for the figure within the medium. Ultimately, I think that art is always about this back-and-forth between the artist and the material, a conversation where the end result remains open to interpretation.