Niet met de honden spelen 1972

Aat Verhoog made this etching, Niet met de honden spelen, sometime in the 20th century. I love the artist's approach to mark-making; the whole image is built up with such careful, delicate strokes, creating a world that feels both real and dreamlike. The texture of the grass is amazing, it’s a dense field of tiny lines, almost like a woven fabric. It gives the image a tactile quality, like you could reach out and feel the slight roughness of the paper. The figures, especially the man and the ghostly child within the rectangle, seem to be straining against something, their bodies tilted as if pushed by a strong wind. The lines around them are so fine, they could disappear at any moment. Verhoog's piece reminds me a bit of Philip Guston's later works, not in style, but in the way both artists embrace a kind of raw honesty and a willingness to play with form and meaning. It’s a reminder that art is always a conversation, an ongoing exchange of ideas across time.