Quai Vert, Bruges 1924

This is John Taylor Arms' "Quai Vert, Bruges," and it looks like it was made with graphite on paper. I look at this drawing and can see Arms completely absorbed by the scene before him. Each line, so delicately placed, is full of care and observation. The reflections on the water must have taken a long time. I imagine he was really trying to capture the light. The buildings and the bridge seem to shimmer, their forms dissolving into the water. It reminds me of some of Whistler's etchings. Arms is part of a longer conversation between artists— a tradition of looking, responding, and transforming. Maybe he was thinking about how to make the old new, how to keep drawing alive as a way of seeing, of knowing a place.