Huis bij een molen 1905

Willem Cornelis Rip made this small pencil drawing called 'House by a Mill' on paper. I love the directness of the mark-making. You can see the give and take. The artist probably started out with a clear image in mind of a house and mill, but the drawing quickly becomes this field of marks, a kind of thicket that obscures the subject. Did Rip start with the house or the mill? It reminds me a little of Philip Guston’s late work where objects are buried amidst the painterly strokes. It's kind of amazing how the materiality of the medium - pencil on paper - becomes the subject, not the landscape, and the artist is in conversation with the world, not just copying it. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?