Ontwerp voor raam in het Noordertransept in de Dom te Utrecht c. 1934

This is a design for a window in the Dom at Utrecht by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst, and it’s made using charcoal and gouache. You can see the artist really working out the composition, thinking through how the different forms are going to fit together. Looking closely at the mark making, you can see how the textures are built up through layers of soft charcoal, smudged and blended. There’s a real sense of process, like the artist is feeling their way through the image. The shapes themselves are quite abstract, almost like geological forms, and the black outlines really make them pop. The gouache adds another layer of depth, giving the piece a kind of luminous quality. It’s really interesting to think about how this would translate into stained glass, with the light shining through. It reminds me a little of some of the early modernist stained glass designs, like you might see in the work of someone like Mondrian, but with a more organic, hand-worked feel. And, as with Mondrian, it's a piece that really embraces ambiguity and invites you to bring your own interpretation.