Gezicht op de Martinikerk te Groningen 1890 - 1946

Here's Cornelis Vreedenburgh's sketch of the Martinikerk in Groningen, made with graphite on paper, a quicksilver medium if ever there was one. Look at the way the artist traps the church spire, squeezing the structure into the rectangle he's marked out on the page. This isn't a picture about accuracy, but about process, about finding form through a blizzard of tiny marks. The pencil is a seismograph, picking up the faintest tremors of inspiration. The texture of the graphite—thin, dry, and immediate—mirrors the urgency of the moment, like a fleeting thought captured before it disappears. Notice that smudge, bottom right, a palimpsest of prior inspiration? Vreedenburgh’s sketch isn't dissimilar to Mondrian’s studies of bare tree branches, where the subject is less important than the act of seeing and recording. Like those works, the Groningen sketch reminds us that art isn't about answers, but about the questions we ask along the way.