Osprey’s Nest 1980

Neil Welliver made this print, Osprey’s Nest, by layering colour on top of colour, which feels a bit like how we come to know a place over time, bit by bit. Up close, the sky is full of these streaky blues and greys, and they're not just colours, they're marks – you can almost feel the squeegee dragging the ink across the surface. That’s how you know someone really made something. Check out that nest, all tangled and dark against the sky, it's like Welliver is showing us how nature builds, stick by stick, layer by layer. It reminds me a bit of Rackstraw Downes’ landscapes where it’s like he’s trying to account for everything he sees out there. With this print, it's not just about the view, it's about how the looking is made. The making shows us how to look.