Duinlandschap Possibly 1908

Alexander Shilling made this landscape drawing with graphite on paper, we don't know when. Look how he's built the sky with these horizontal marks, almost like a mass of scribbles, or maybe like a cloud, heavy with rain. It feels like he’s feeling his way through the scene, responding to the landscape one mark at a time. The whole drawing is built from these marks, each one a little different, some dark, some light, some long, some short. See how they create a sense of depth, with the darkest marks in the foreground and the lightest in the background? It reminds me of those drawings by Cy Twombly, where the energy of the mark is just as important as what it represents. It's not just a picture of a landscape; it’s about the experience of seeing and drawing. Shilling uses the simplest of means to convey a complex emotional and spatial experience. I could look at this for hours.