Desert Sentinels, Apache Trail, Arizona c. 1930

George Elbert Burr made this print of the Arizona desert landscape sometime around 1930, using etching. Look closely, and you can see that it's made up of these incredible tiny lines, all working together. For me, Burr's art feels like a loving meditation on process. I’m always interested in the physical nitty-gritty of a work, and here, the physicality comes through so strongly. Burr uses line to create a whole world. The mountains in the background are almost architectural, while the cacti in the foreground, the so-called "desert sentinels", stand tall with a quiet grandeur. The variation in the mark making in this work is really something, and it gives the scene real depth and texture. There’s something very Hopper-esque about the loneliness and quiet grandeur here. And like Agnes Martin, Burr uses a simple, almost repetitive technique to explore the subtleties of the natural world. In the end, art is really a conversation, an exchange of ideas across time.