Uranus 1880 - 1932

Henri van der Stok made this black ink print of Uranus sometime between 1900 and 1946. Van der Stok would have spent some time carving into a block, maybe wood or linoleum, to create the image. I am imagining him patiently gouging away at the surface. The result is pretty striking: a bearded face and a symbol above its head radiate authority, a bit like one of those old Hollywood biblical epics. This guy’s got big, staring eyes and he's topped by a star sending out rays of light. This work makes me consider Hilma af Klint and her interest in occultism and the expression of spiritual ideas. You can see the gouges, the nicks, and the sheer pressure of hand that has made this image exist – that’s what I call embodied expression. The conversation between artists goes on across time, and each mark we make responds to a history of image-making that has come before. Each artist starts with an awareness of what came before and uses it to inform what they do next.