Landschap met bebouwing c. 1909s

This double page landscape sketch by Alexander Shilling is all about the push and pull of line. On the left, he's playing with pale blue contour lines, a kind of hesitant architecture emerging. Then on the right page, a total contrast! Here, it's all about the dense, scratchy graphite marks, building up tone and texture, maybe some buildings nestled in trees. I love the way he's not precious with the medium, just letting the pencil fly, trusting the process. Look closely, and you can almost feel the pressure of his hand, the way the graphite catches on the tooth of the paper. It's all about the energy of the mark making. This reminds me a little of Alfred Kubin’s dreamlike landscapes, that same embrace of ambiguity and a willingness to let the image emerge from the subconscious. It’s an attitude to art that says, “I don’t need to know exactly where I’m going. I trust the process.”