Powis 1972

Leonard Lehrer's print, Powis, unfolds as a landscape of tonal curiosity, rendered in shades of grey. Imagine him, Lehrer, hunched over a plate, coaxing out these forms with acid and ink. Look at how Lehrer built up the image with many, many marks. It’s like he's feeling his way through the landscape, one tone at a time. I wonder what it was like for Lehrer making this? Was he thinking about space, about the way forms overlap and suggest depth? Perhaps he was like a method actor, trying to embody the scene. Take those bulbous trees. The marks read almost like watercolours, or maybe a kind of atmospheric mist. And that staircase—doesn't it suggest endless possibilities? It’s about finding something in the doing, a conversation with the plate, where the final image is as much a surprise to the artist as it is to us. Artists are always in conversation.