Ontwerp voor een venster met twee voorstellingen van figuren in zeilboten 1900 - 1903

Antoon Derkinderen made this design for a window with pencil and colored chalk, thinking about figures in sailboats. I love seeing the artist's hand so clearly in a drawing like this; the blue chalk that fills each scene, the pencil lines like scaffolding. It’s really just a suggestion of color, but it's enough to set the tone. I think it might have been a kind of experiment or a visual note, something the artist could keep coming back to in order to generate new ideas. I imagine Derkinderen standing at his easel, stepping back, squinting, adding some blue there, a little ochre here, the barest amount of information. It makes me think about all the different ways of seeing and how the process of art making is also a process of discovery. It reminds me that artists are constantly riffing off of each other, borrowing ideas across time, and finding new ways to express the human experience.