Kale boom 1919

Julie de Graag made this woodcut, Kale boom, which translates to something like Cabbage Tree, sometime before 1924. There's such a clarity of light and dark, a dance between what’s present and what’s absent. Look at how the marks create the bare branches reaching up, almost like veins of a leaf. The negative space becomes just as important as the tree itself, doesn’t it? I think it reminds us that artmaking is always a process of choosing what to reveal and what to leave hidden. The way the wood is carved gives the image a tangible, tactile quality. You can almost feel the grain of the wood, the push and pull of the tool. It's raw, immediate, and incredibly powerful. It puts me in mind of the work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, another artist who wasn't afraid to let the process show, to let the wood speak. There's so much that we can never really know for sure, and that’s what keeps me coming back.