Landweg langs een weiland 1890 - 1946

This landscape, Landweg langs een weiland, was sketched by Cornelis Vreedenburgh, and it looks like he used graphite on paper. You can really see Vreedenburgh thinking through the composition here. It's all about the texture of those marks, which are so light and open. Look at the zig-zag hatching in the background to the right: the angled strokes are very intuitive and spontaneous, like automatic writing. He’s conjuring this place, not describing it. The physical act of drawing seems really important here. The texture becomes almost sculptural, like he's building up the image from nothing, stroke by stroke. Vreedenburgh reminds me a little of Alfred Kubin in that sense. Both of these guys knew that art is about a conversation with the materials and the surface, and an invitation for us to see the world in new ways.