Kees zittend op een schutting before 1926

Anny Leusink made this small drawing, Kees zittend op een schutting, probably with ink and wash, and a very fine pen for the details. Look at that cross-hatching! You can almost feel her hand moving across the page, one line at a time. The whole image seems to be constructed with an additive process. There’s a real sense of building up the image, mark by mark. Take the tree on the right. Notice the texture, created by layers of these tiny lines. This part of the work is very dense and textural. Leusink’s drawing reminds me of the work of illustrators like Aubrey Beardsley, or even some of the later Symbolists; artists who were less interested in realism, and more invested in their own symbolic languages. Like them, she uses a kind of short-hand to construct the whole, letting the sum be more than the parts. Ultimately, that is what makes a work of art stay with you – the fact that it doesn't reveal all its secrets at once.