Landschap met bomen c. 1909s

Alexander Shilling made this little landscape with trees sketch, probably on the spot, in a notebook. On the right-hand side, the marks are dark and emphatic, zig-zagging, capturing the essence of the landscape with minimal fuss, just dark hatched marks conjuring up shadow and volume. While on the other side, the same scene is sketched in a pale, washy, blue. It's amazing how different the same image can feel by the simple application of tone and pressure. The blank central seam of the book acts like a pause, a breath held between two ways of seeing the same thing. It brings to mind the work of Morandi, whose paintings of bottles and jars seem to repeat and repeat, but subtly varied each time, so we are forced to notice the nuances of light and shade. Art is a conversation across time. Nothing is ever really finished.