Pijnboom 1912

Reijer Stolk made this black ink woodcut called 'Pijnboom'—that's pine tree in Dutch, right?—on paper, but we don’t know exactly when. I imagine him, knife in hand, carving away at the block, each cut a deliberate decision, a commitment. I like to imagine the artist thinking hard about this tree; its shape, its presence. The dark, thick lines create a sense of volume, but also flatten the image, pushing it towards abstraction. The textured grain of the wood is still visible, adding another layer to the image, reminding us of the material, the hand of the artist. The background is almost like rain, those vertical marks creating a sense of weather, air, atmosphere, a kind of wildness. It reminds me a bit of some of the German Expressionist woodcuts, that same energy and roughness. Artists are always looking, always learning from each other, carrying on a conversation across time. And that's what it’s all about, isn’t it?