Skitser af planter og anden ornamentik 1906

Niels Larsen Stevns made these plant and ornament sketches with pencil and watercolor, maybe en plein air, in a little notebook. I can imagine him outside somewhere, maybe in his garden, playing with shapes and forms like they are words. The loose handling of watercolor feels like a kind of visual note-taking, not labored but instead immediate. The squares of the paper showing through remind me that painting is always built upon some kind of support, whether it be canvas, paper, or an idea. I wonder if he was thinking about how the play of darks and lights could convey both form and feeling. It seems like he was trying to distill a shape to its essence. It’s as if the artist is saying, “What is the simplest shape I can make, and can it still feel like a flower?” When I look at these sketches, I feel like I'm looking over his shoulder as he works through his thought process.