Ontwerp voor een tapijt met een ster in een geornamenteerd ovaal 1922

Dirk Verstraten made this carpet design with watercolour and pencil sometime in the first half of the 20th century, and right away I'm drawn to how the crisp geometric shapes wrestle with the fluid, organic forms. I love that it's not overworked, you can really see the hand of the artist, figuring things out, right there on the page. There's a tension between the finished and the unfinished; half the design is rendered in full colour, dense pigment, while the other half is just the ghostly beginnings of a sketch, a pale green tracery of plant-like forms. The layering of colour, the way the star explodes with yellows and oranges, it reminds me a little of Hilma af Klint’s more mystical works. Ultimately, it's a reminder that art is an ongoing experiment, a dance between intention and accident.