Wolkenlucht 1890 - 1946

Cornelis Vreedenburgh made this drawing, Wolkenlucht, with graphite on paper. Imagine him outside, squinting up at the sky, trying to capture the fleeting shapes of the clouds. There's something so immediate and raw about a drawing like this. You see the artist thinking, feeling, trying to pin down something ephemeral. The lines are quick, searching, not precious. I wonder what he was thinking about as he made this? Was he just trying to record the clouds for later use in a painting? Or was he feeling something deeper, something about the vastness of the sky, or the way the light was changing? Look at the way he's scribbled those lines to suggest the density of the clouds on the top left. It’s like he's trying to grab hold of something that's constantly shifting. It reminds me of Constable and other landscape painters who were so attentive to the sky. Artists are in an ongoing conversation across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting is a form of expression which embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations.