Figurskitser og plantestudie med notat 1900 - 1904

This is a sketchbook page by Niels Larsen Stevns, filled with scribbled forms and studies. It's all graphite on paper, quick and energetic. I imagine Stevns in a garden, rapidly jotting down observations on the page. The page becomes a kind of mental playground, an arena for experimenting with ideas and forms. He works out a little group of figures, perhaps farmers lugging buckets. There's a quick notation of a rooster. And then this elaborate twisting plant form. I love the range of marks here. It’s so interesting how he takes one idea and then worries at it, turning it around to see if it works from different angles. It makes me think about how painting is really about thinking, about seeing. Artists make images, but what they’re really doing is showing us how they see the world. And that vision is something that they share with us, and with each other. It’s all one big conversation.