Opus 3658,59,60 Possibly 1927

Albert Plasschaert made Opus 3658,59,60 with ink and paint, but I don’t know when. There's an earthy feel to it, a kind of digging in the dirt, a building up and scraping away that speaks to artmaking as a process of revelation, a slow unveiling. The texture is key here, thick with tangled lines and worn surfaces. Plasschaert builds up a landscape, or maybe it's a dreamscape, with dense, scratchy marks. The dark ink is dragged across the surface, giving it a tactile quality. The way the ink pools and bleeds in places suggests a real love of the materials. Look at the centre of the composition where a face appears from the tangled landscape, like something uncovered. This reminds me a little of Alfred Kubin, who also used ink to create dark, psychological landscapes. Both artists seem to relish the ambiguity of their art. It’s this embrace of uncertainty that makes the piece so compelling, inviting us to get lost in its depths, to find our own path through the woods.