Man die de krant leest op een stoel c. 1917 - 1919

Otto Verhagen made this drawing of a man reading a newspaper in a chair with pencil and coloured pencil. The lines are so fragile, tentative, and free, like they almost want to break, yet, they're holding things together just fine. The green on the newspaper really pops. It flattens out the image and brings it forward. It's as though Verhagen didn't want to fill every space or line completely—there is a dance between the visible and the suggested. I feel the artist empathising with their subject and letting the drawing grow out of that empathetic process. What was Verhagen thinking as he drew this man? Perhaps he was captivated by the quiet intimacy of this person absorbed in the world of news. Artists are constantly in dialogue with each other across time, inspiring each other's creativity. Painting is a form of embodied expression. It embraces ambiguity and uncertainty and allows for multiple interpretations.