Molen aan een waterkant c. 1909s

Alexander Shilling made this sketch of a mill on a waterfront in a sketchbook, using blue and black pencil. I love the immediacy of these kinds of drawings; it’s like catching the artist in the act of thinking. You can see the ghost of the mill appear in blue on the left-hand side. Shilling seems to have shifted his perspective slightly and re-drawn it in black, with some energetic hatching in the foreground to suggest water. I imagine him standing there, squinting in the light, trying to capture the essence of the scene before him. It's so evocative of being present in a particular place. These quick marks allow the artist to find the basic forms. He's finding something out as he makes these marks, just like me when I paint! I see this and think of other artists like Guston, Auerbach, or even Twombly, where the act of mark-making becomes a record of thought. These are intimate, vulnerable works where the artist's hand and mind are laid bare, and in that process, we can somehow find our own.