Aangemeerde zeilboot aan een kade 1890 - 1946

Here at the Rijksmuseum we have a sketch of a moored sailboat on a quay by Cornelis Vreedenburgh. Imagine Vreedenburgh with his sketchbook on the dockside. The pencil scratches dart around the page, unsure and yet somehow confident. I feel a real sense of inquiry in this work. How does he capture that awkward space of the boat tethered to the land? There's a vulnerability in these lines, a quiet struggle to translate a three-dimensional world onto a flat page. His marks are like hesitant gestures, feeling their way through the forms, allowing the boat to emerge from a haze of lines. Looking at this, I start to think about other artists, and how much we are all in an ongoing conversation, exchanging ideas and inspiring each other's creativity. I see in this work a form of embodied expression which embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meaning.