Cliffs 1917

František Drtikol made this drawing called 'Cliffs' with graphite on paper. The paper is a warm tan colour, and the graphite marks vary between a pale grey haze and dark hatched shadows. I imagine him outside, squinting at the sun glinting off the water, trying to capture the shapes of the rocks looming above. The dark marks at the base suggest the shore in the foreground, and the soft smudgy marks in the sky make it look like the cliffs are dissolving into the atmosphere. I wonder if the artist had to work quickly, before the light changed too much. It reminds me that artists are always in conversation, responding to the world around them and to each other’s ways of seeing. And how those marks can carry feeling, like a visual echo of a fleeting moment.