Dorpsgezicht met kerktoren 1923

Alexander Shilling made this sketch of a village scene with a church tower with graphite on paper. The whole thing is so economical, isn’t it? So few lines, but they do so much work! Notice how Shilling builds the image out of individual strokes. Look at the roof of the house on the right. See how the lines are all parallel, but each one is slightly different in weight and direction? This is the kind of drawing that acknowledges the hand, and celebrates it. It doesn’t try to fool you into thinking it’s a photograph. I like to think of these lines as little bits of energy. They’re not just describing the shape of the roof, they’re also showing us how the artist was feeling as he drew it. He could have been looking at work by Jacob Maris, an artist who also had a knack for making very subtle atmospheric landscape pieces that were deeply influenced by the light of the Dutch landscape.