Tombstone 1942

Albert Urban made this print – Tombstone – sometime in the 1940s. I'm imagining him in his studio, carving into a block, wrestling with the image emerging from the wood, the stark contrast of black and white, a ghostly grey, and the pale green ink. The texture is rough, expressive, kind of spooky. The composition itself is like a dance of light and shadow, as if this were a scene half-remembered, a dream on the verge of fading. I keep thinking about the making, about how this was built up. The lines, like lightning bolts, create this feeling of restless energy. What I really love about it is its openness, the not-knowing, the invitation to bring your own story to it. There's a kinship with other artists who embrace the handmade, that leave the trace of their touch visible in the finished work. Each of us, through our own marks, carries on this really long conversation.