Twilight by Charles Beck, Image 3.
Twilight presents a stand of bare deciduous trees silhouetted against a blazing autumn sky, their intricate branch work carved in reserve against successive layers of magenta, crimson, salmon, and amber. Beck's multi-block process — each color requiring a separately carved and inked woodblock — produces a luminous chromatic depth that rewards close looking, the horizontal striations of the sky giving the light a pulsing, almost vibratory quality. The trees occupy the middle ground as a dense, lacy screen, their winter architecture simultaneously fragile and monumental. The darkened foreground, in deep burgundy and near-black, suggests earth or still water, grounding the incandescent sky and lending the composition a reflective gravity. The overall effect captures the brilliance of a Minnesota fall dusk or dawn — with both formal precision and genuine feeling.
  • Subject Matter: Fall landscape with bare trees at twilight.