Gone Fishing — Linocut

A father and a child sit in a wooden rowboat on a flat lake, each with a rod over the side. Two lines hang straight down into the water, one on each side of the boat, and each ends in a ring of ripples.

Fishing is one of the few pastimes that pays for its own upkeep. Under the Dingell-Johnson Act of 1950, a federal excise tax on fishing tackle, later joined by taxes on motorboat fuel, goes to state wildlife agencies. They spend it on fisheries research, hatcheries, habitat and boat access, which means the ramp a rowboat is launched from may well have been paid for, in part, by the people who fish from it.

The scene sits inside a black circle, like a low sun. Inside it a line of trees runs along the far shore under three banks of cloud, and the lake is carved into thick, wavering bands across the foreground. The two figures sit close together in the boat, and the whole picture is in heavy black on cream, with the bold, gouged look of a linocut.