Park met bomen Possibly 1906 - 1909

Willem Witsen made this drawing, called "Park met Bomen", with black chalk, maybe in a park in Amsterdam. Look at how Witsen has built up this scene – trees framing the foreground, a little grazing cow, and two distant figures walking near a fence. With simple strokes, he evokes a sense of place and atmosphere. I can imagine him outside, maybe a little cold, quickly trying to capture the scene. The network of lines is the bones, or the infrastructure, that holds the image together. I'm always trying to draw and redraw something, like de Kooning did, trying to figure out how to make a form come alive. Witsen’s got that here, the bare essence of observation. I feel like his process—the scratching and smudging—is a kind of thinking. It feels like it captures how we experience the world, through fragmented moments and fleeting impressions. We all do this; we look at each other's work and carry on the conversation.