Studie af profil 1919

This small sketch by Niels Larsen Stevns is an intimate, immediate thing. A horizon line sits near the top, like a held breath, and below it, handwritten notations mix with sketched forms. I imagine Stevns outside, maybe a bit chilly, quickly trying to capture a sense of place, a memory of a place. What’s so great about sketches is they are like little clues into how an artist sees and what they consider important. In this work, the notations become like another set of marks, almost as if the words are holding the image together. I love this layering of seeing and thinking. It's like he’s in conversation with the landscape, each mark and word a response to something he's experiencing. It’s this exchange, this vulnerability, that makes me feel like I’m in on the secret, part of the conversation too. Artists like Stevns show us how to look, how to find meaning in the everyday.