Wapen met een vogel en een kasteel c. 1903 - 1904

This is Carel Adolph Lion Cachet's sketch of a coat of arms with a bird and castle, made with pencil on paper. It's light, airy, almost hesitant – you can practically feel Cachet's hand moving across the page, testing out the composition. The texture of the paper is smooth, but the lines themselves are quite scratchy and immediate. Look at the top of the shield - the tiny marks, and the barely-there shading of the castle. It's a beautiful study in process, a glimpse into the artist’s thought process as he works out this heraldic design. I'm reminded of other artists who use line in a similar way, like Cy Twombly. But where Twombly's lines are explosive and gestural, Cachet's are more tentative, more restrained. The act of mark making is the art itself, a conversation on paper.