Ornamenten met vogels en leeuwen c. 1925

This is Ornamenten met vogels en leeuwen, or Ornaments with Birds and Lions, by Carel Adolph Lion Cachet, over here at the Rijksmuseum. It’s drawn with a pencil on gridded paper. I love sketchbooks. They are a place for making mistakes, for trying things out. It’s so cool to see the lightness of touch in these drawings. It feels like the artist is playing, exploring different ways of representing these figures, birds and lions. I wonder if the artist was thinking about heraldry, or maybe even illuminated manuscripts? These motifs – the birds and lions – they feel like they’re pulled from some kind of ancient source. What I really dig is the combination of these almost medieval-feeling images with the grid of the graph paper. It creates such an interesting tension. It's as if the artist is using this modern tool, the grid, to tap into something much older. Drawings like this remind me that art is always a conversation. Artists look at the past, mess with it, and bring their own experiences to the table.