The Bellringer's Wife 1934

Robert Austin made this etching, The Bellringer's Wife, at some point in his career, the work is about process, a dense web of lines that, to me, reads as a kind of emotional mapping. Look at the web of marks that describe the steps. They’re almost collapsing in on themselves, creating this dizzying sense of space. And then there's the figure of the wife, rendered with such tenderness, her head bowed, almost lost in the thicket of lines. There is something about the contrast between the chaotic background and the figure that really gets me, the overall sense of atmosphere in the work is dark and heavy. Austin's work reminds me a little of Paula Rego, in that both are able to infuse their work with a deep sense of humanity, but where Rego's work is often overtly theatrical, Austin's feels more internal, introspective. Art, at its best, gives us these open-ended questions, doesn't it?