Notities 1890 - 1946

This piece is a page of Cornelis Vreedenburgh's notes in pencil, and it’s like stumbling into someone’s thought process. The whole thing is about mark-making, right? It's the scratches and scribbles that make up the image, not some grand illusion. I find myself drawn to the crossed-out numbers and the dense, almost frantic handwriting. It’s all about the materiality of the pencil on paper: the smudges, the varying pressure. You can almost feel Vreedenburgh's hand moving across the page, figuring things out, changing his mind. The words, too, are like abstract shapes, weaving in and out of legibility. It reminds me a little of Cy Twombly, in that it feels like a secret language, or maybe just a really personal map of the artist’s mind. It’s a reminder that art is often about the process, the journey, not just the destination.