Ontwerp voor een vignet met schuddende handen 1910

Reinier Willem Petrus de Vries made this design for a vignette with shaking hands on paper, sometime around the turn of the century. It's all about the line here; tentative, searching, like the artist is feeling his way through an idea. I love how you can see the under-drawing, the ghost marks of what came before. It’s like he’s mapping out a territory, figuring out where the boundaries lie. Notice the shaking hands in the middle, surrounded by this elaborate frame, and the dates 1877 and 1910? There's a story there, a connection being made. This piece reminds me of the graphic work of Paul Klee, where the image seems to emerge from a web of lines and symbols. Art isn't about answers, it's about the questions we ask, and the connections we make along the way.