Vrouw met baby before 2009

Curator: So, what do you think of this one? "Vrouw met baby," or "Woman with Baby," by Aat Verhoog. We believe it was completed sometime before 2009. Editor: Immediately, it feels… fragmentary. Like a dream barely remembered. The linework is delicate, almost tentative. What grabs you about it? Curator: The way it assembles disparate elements: figures, a landscape, flowers, insects... they seem to exist independently, yet they create this unified emotional landscape. It’s drawn on paper, likely with both pencil and ink – a very intimate medium. Editor: Yes, the materials lend to that intimacy. The woman in the foreground, almost floating, she commands the most space. And that small, cradled infant…it's like a memory, almost superimposed on reality. Tell me, what do you make of these divisions across the drawing? Curator: It reads like visual poetry, doesn't it? The drawing juxtaposes distinct realities. Perhaps it speaks to the multifaceted experience of motherhood. These fragments of lived reality versus those dreamlike, hoped for moments... It is more idea, emotion. Editor: Perhaps Verhoog is employing visual syntax reminiscent of early Modernist collage? The fragmented imagery becomes a structural principle. But more compelling, those flowers on the side! They have this weird symmetry alongside those detailed wasps which I guess symbolize an uneasy harmony? Curator: Perhaps a reflection of natural cycles - birth, nurture, decay. I imagine that the image would almost invite one to find meaning where one otherwise does not look? Editor: Precisely. Which gives the whole piece this sense of openness that really appeals to me. What kind of story might emerge, do you think? Curator: Oh, any kind, and always a deeply personal one, I think. I imagine myself seeing this piece somewhere quiet, early in the morning and, with coffee in hand, daydream myself right into this intimate world on the page. Editor: Beautiful. And with that in mind, it may be time for me to wander into that story too.