Fields of San Gimignano 1909

This is "Fields of San Gimignano," an etching made by Donald Shaw MacLaughlan. Etchings are all about process, and here the artist is really thinking through the image as he makes it. Look at the diagonal strokes suggesting the planes of the landscape. They're not just descriptive; they're almost like the artist is building the hills and valleys right in front of us! It’s pretty clear he wanted to keep that sense of “just made” alive in the final print. The lines define the forms, of course, but it’s more than that. They impart a felt sense of what it’s like to draw, to see, to translate a three-dimensional scene onto a flat surface. There’s something so fresh and immediate about this piece. It reminds me of the landscape drawings of Hercules Segers, another printmaker who approached the medium with a painter's sensibility. For both artists, the final image isn’t just a picture; it’s a record of a journey, a testament to the act of seeing and making.