Vuisten 1891 - 1941

Leo Gestel made this drawing called ‘Vuisten’, which means fists, at an unknown date, using a pencil on paper. Look at how the lines emerge and shift—Gestel really goes after it! I'm thinking about what it's like to try to draw a hand. I've done it myself. There's something super compelling and awkward about it because hands are so expressive. They're like faces, but even more mobile, more gestural, and way harder to get right. It is clear from this drawing that Gestel isn’t attempting realism, but is instead trying to capture something about movement and expression. The marks are exploratory, fast, almost nervous. There's a real sense of looking, searching, trying to feel it out. You see the hand, and then you see a ghost image of other possible hands. This makes me think about how we learn from each other as artists. You work out a problem, and then another artist sees what you did and takes it in a different direction, and the conversation continues over time.