Kop van een vrouw 1906 - 1945

Reijer Stolk made this drawing, titled *Kop van een vrouw*, sometime before 1945 using graphite on paper. It’s a quick study, full of scratching and cross-hatching – the kind of thing you might do to warm up. I can almost feel the artist’s hand moving across the page, trying to capture the essence of their subject. There’s a tentative quality to the lines, as if Stolk is feeling their way through the form, adjusting and refining with each stroke. It’s like he’s thinking aloud with his pencil. The woman’s gaze is directed down and away, like a Degas ballerina caught between rehearsals. You get the sense that she is melancholy, lost in thought. I wonder who she was, and what Stolk might have been thinking as he sketched her likeness. I see a kinship with other artists who weren’t afraid to leave the evidence of their process visible – artists who understood that the real magic happens in the gaps and in the in-between spaces. Each of us is participating in a grand, ongoing conversation, echoing and riffing on the ideas of those who came before.