Ships 1915

This sketchy work, Ships, by Paul Klee, looks like it was made with graphite on paper, and must have come into being line by line, with the artist perhaps searching, probing, and feeling his way around the page. I can totally relate to this process. Sometimes, I start a painting without a clear plan, letting the marks guide me, kind of like Klee did here. I can imagine Klee, maybe on a break from his teaching duties at the Bauhaus, just letting his mind wander to the sea. I see the sun shining down on the boats and the water, rendered with such playful simplicity. The lines are delicate but confident, suggesting a world that is both real and imagined. His ships bob on the page and this makes me think of other artists like Joan Miro. It’s amazing how artists riff off each other across time and space, constantly inspiring new ways of seeing and making. Each mark, each line, carries a feeling, an intention, a piece of the artist’s soul, and the work is never really finished, it is just there to create more meanings for us.