The Hill City 1909

Donald Shaw MacLaughlan made this print, using a plate and a sheet, to conjure a city on a hill. It is a symphony of tiny marks, scratches really, that somehow accumulate into a vision. You can imagine MacLaughlan, bent over the plate, his eyes squinting, pushing the tool into the metal again and again. It's a slow build, a tender accumulation, a conversation between the artist, the tool, and the material. Look at how he’s teased out the textures of the trees, building volume and depth with these tiny, insistent lines. It's almost obsessive, like he's trying to capture every leaf, every branch, every shadow. But then, in the distance, those buildings rise up, stark and solid against the sky. It's like a dream, the way the city emerges from the landscape, both separate from it and completely a part of it. I think about Piranesi, and how he also built worlds with lines.