Winnowing Wheat 1937

John Sloan made this etching, ‘Winnowing Wheat’, with decisive lines on a small plate. I imagine the artist scratching into the metal, defining the figure and the adobe architecture with these marks, some tentative, others sure. The woman in the foreground is caught in a moment of labor, and it’s amazing how the artist can freeze this act of winnowing, separating grain from chaff with such a dense network of etched lines. I am curious about how Sloan chose to focus on everyday scenes, and what it was like for him painting this woman. Was he thinking about her labor, the earthiness of her task? I like how Sloan captures a sense of place, the earth, the houses, the sleeping dogs. It’s a whole world captured on this tiny plate. It makes me think about how we are always in conversation with the artists who came before us, carrying on the work of figuring out how to make marks, and what those marks can mean.