The Pines 1935 - 1943

Mortimer Borne made "The Pines" with etching on paper. Look at these marks, scratched into the metal, and then printed—a kind of drawing with acid! I love the way the trees lean in, all gothic and a bit spooky, like an illustration from a dark fairytale. You can imagine him outside, squinting at the scene, trying to capture the light filtering through the branches, the textures of the bark, the shapes of the houses in the distance. It's like he's wrestling with the image, coaxing it out of the metal, line by line. The starkness of the black and white adds to the drama, giving everything a timeless quality. Artists are always in conversation, you know? Borne's work reminds me of other printmakers, all those folks trying to capture the world in marks. And that’s the thing about painting, about art, it's never really finished, it just keeps going, morphing, changing, as each of us brings our own take to it.