Old Church, St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada 1951

John Marin sketched this church in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, with what looks like a ballpoint pen in 1931. Just imagine him there, quickly capturing the scene, line by line. The way he's used that blue ink is so evocative, almost vibrating off the page. Look at those squiggly lines around the steeple and the trees. See how they give the impression of movement, as though the church is swaying in the breeze. I love how the lines aren’t trying to be realistic; they're more about feeling. I wonder what Marin was thinking about as he drew this. Was he trying to capture the history of the building, or was he more interested in the way the light hit the facade? This piece reminds me of other drawings where artists have used a similar kind of shorthand to express something essential about a place. It's like they're trying to get to the heart of the matter with as few strokes as possible. This is the kind of work that shows how one artist can inspire another, generations later.