Staande vrouw met een schep c. 1922 - 1925

Otto Verhagen made this lovely pencil drawing of a standing woman holding a spade. It’s a really delicate drawing, a spare and minimal depiction of a figure. I love how the quickness of the marks suggest movement. The woman has been caught in a transient moment, a snap-shot of a scene. I imagine the artist quickly sketched the scene, making use of the page’s blankness to highlight the woman’s presence. I wonder what the artist wanted to communicate? There's a kind of humble beauty in it that reminds me of Fairfield Porter's paintings of everyday scenes. Artists notice things, and then, with a strange kind of alchemy, they make us notice them too. It makes you think, doesn't it, about how painters are always in conversation with each other, across time, inspiring each other's seeing. They make paintings to embrace ambiguity, and that allows for multiple readings rather than any one fixed idea.