Gezicht op het Damrak te Amsterdam, gezien naar de Warmoesstraat 1912

George Hendrik Breitner made this drawing of the Damrak in Amsterdam, looking towards the Warmoesstraat, with pencil on paper. What hits me first is the speed, the immediacy. Breitner's captured a moment, a fleeting impression of the city. It's all in these shaky, searching lines. You can almost feel the graphite scraping against the paper. See how he uses these quick, vertical strokes to suggest the buildings, how the pencil hardly leaves the page. There’s a kind of vulnerable honesty in showing us his working, his process, the way he thinks through a subject. It reminds me of a Cy Twombly, that looseness. Both artists share a willingness to embrace uncertainty, to let the hand lead the eye, and to let the viewer complete the picture. It’s a generous act really, an offering. And like all good art, it reminds us that seeing is never a passive activity, but an ongoing conversation between the world and ourselves.