Boten op een gracht in een stad

This is a drawing called ‘Boats on a canal in a city’ by Cornelis Vreedenburgh. Look at the way the lines seem to dance across the page, searching for the form of the boats and buildings. The artist isn’t trying to capture a perfect image, but something more like a fleeting impression. It's all about the texture here – the grainy feel of the pencil on paper. You can almost feel the artist’s hand moving, as he builds up the image with layers of marks. There's a dark cluster of lines at the bottom right that suggests a boat, maybe? But the image is less about what it represents, and more about the act of representing itself, the process of drawing, of trying to capture a world in lines. Thinking about other artists who work this way, I'm reminded of the way Cy Twombly used drawing, writing and mark-making to create space for free association. Vreedenburgh seems to be inviting us into a space of similar freedom, one where meaning is always provisional, unfixed, always on the move.