Cotton Gin

During the 1940s, Oklahoma artist J. Jay McVicker created black and white aquatints of the Oklahoma landscape and industrial scenes, such as Cotton Gin, in a representational style that echoes that of Doel Reed, his former professor. In this particular work, McVicker depicts the machinery used in cotton production at night with a single bright light illuminating the scene. The gray and deep black tones McVicker captured in this image were achieved through the aquatint process, a printmaking technique in which acid bites into a resin-treated plate, producing a wide range of tonal values in the resulting image.