Siermotief 1874 - 1945

This is Carel Adolph Lion Cachet’s Siermotief at the Rijksmuseum, made with pen and ink. Oh, the life of a line, right? I can imagine Cachet hunched over this page, meticulously guiding the ink, maybe muttering to himself, "Just a bit more curve here, a sharper flick there." You know, it’s like the ink has a mind of its own. He's wrestling with it, coaxing it to create this elegant, symmetrical form. I wonder if he was thinking of nouveau plant forms when he made this. I think about the pure physicality of drawing, the way the hand moves, the pressure applied, the little imperfections that give it life. Look at the way the lines thicken and thin, creating a rhythm. It's almost musical, like a visual score. It reminds me of the obsessive mark-making of artists like Agnes Martin or even some of the folk art I love. It’s a beautiful dance between control and accident, and that's what makes it so compelling, right? We painters are all magpies, borrowing and stealing from each other across time.