Landschap met bomen 1919

Reijer Stolk made this landscape with trees using pen on paper, and you can see the marks of the pen moving quickly across the page. It makes you wonder what it’s like to see something like this, maybe out of the window of a moving train, and try to capture it in a drawing. There’s a lot of variety in the way Stolk uses the pen. The trees and bushes are made up of these small looping lines, almost like doodles. Then you have the bolder, straighter lines of the tree trunks, and the squiggly marks in the upper left that could be foliage. This is a reminder that artmaking is a conversation between the artist and the materials that involves chance and choice. This drawing puts me in mind of some of Guston's looser, more sketch-like ink drawings. There’s a sense of capturing a fleeting moment, not trying to get it perfect, but just embracing the imperfection of the line. Ultimately, art is an invitation, not a declaration, to see and feel the world in different ways.