Plowing at Foot of Holy Hill Church c. 1930s

Hulda Rotier Fischer made this etching called Plowing at Foot of Holy Hill Church, and you can see it’s all about mark-making. The image is built from this frenetic energy of short, dense lines. Imagine Fischer bent over the plate, pushing the needle to create textures and tonalities – almost like a form of controlled scribbling. What might she have been thinking about as she etched? There’s the obvious stuff, like the farmer and those beefy, monumental horses. And then, looming above, is that gothic church, sitting on top of the hill like an apparition. Look at the direction of the lines and how they create a kind of churning effect, almost like the air itself is moving. It makes me think about other artists who were playing with a similar vocabulary, like Käthe Kollwitz and her powerful depictions of labor and struggle. I bet Hulda would have looked at her work and said, “Yeah, I get it. I’m working hard too.” In the end, we are all in conversation, and every mark connects us.