Hoofd van een vrouw met een parelketting c. 1916

This drawing of a woman with a pearl necklace was made by Reijer Stolk with graphite on paper. What I notice first is this grid structure. You can see the ghost of the grid which Stolk must have used to map out the composition, and then the figure starts to emerge within its confines. I think about the artist’s process. Maybe the artist was trying to get something down quickly, or perhaps they were thinking about math, structure, and proportion. I love the way you can see the marks and how they’re trying to find the place where the form fits into the space. The face is looking down, eyes cast downward in a very vulnerable position, and all those lines are so tentative and searching, as if the artist is feeling their way into the subject’s inner life. This drawing also makes me think about all the other artists out there, past and present, who are using drawing to explore and understand the world around them. We are all in this great big conversation together.