Annotaties 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this drawing on paper, called Annotaties, sometime during his lifetime. It's got this off-white, almost aged look to it, like you're looking at a page torn from a very old notebook. The surface is stained with light brown spots, like coffee splatters or maybe rust, which gives it a history, a sense of having been around, handled, and lived with. Scrawled in the upper left, there’s handwriting, a name maybe, and some numbers. A faint sketch in pencil meanders across the middle, a suggestion of forms, unfinished and fleeting. These marks, these gestures, they feel like thoughts caught in the act of becoming. It reminds me a bit of Cy Twombly's notebooks, all scribbles and suggestions. I love how the piece embraces the accidental. It's not about perfection but about the messy, beautiful process of thinking and seeing.