Sjabloon met ornament 1884 - 1952

Reinier Willem Petrus de Vries made this Sjabloon met ornament sometime in his life with paint on paper. The colour palette in this piece is really intriguing, and the approach to mark making, suggests an understanding of artmaking as a process that's about playing around and seeing what happens. Looking at the material aspects of the work, it's all about texture and colour and surface. You can see the physicality of the medium, how the paint is both thin and opaque. I can almost tell what kinds of brushes may have been used in its making, and how the process is both concealed and revealed at the same time. These elements shape our emotional experience of the artwork and contribute to its conceptual resonances. See the way the colours merge in the middle? It's very subtle but also striking. It feels a bit like the work of Hilma af Klint, who played with some similar imagery. It has an ambiguity that makes it hard to pin down, which is, of course, the point.