Band met een floraal motief c. 1901

Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof made this floral sketch with pencil on paper; it’s now held at the Rijksmuseum. The quick, almost scribbled marks have a real energy, don't they? I love the way Dijsselhof captures the essence of the flowers, not with painstaking detail, but with these loose, flowing lines. It's all about gesture, an immediate response. Look at the varied pressure of the lines, some thick, some barely there. And the way the pencil catches on the tooth of the paper gives it a lovely, tactile quality. The composition is so simple; the artist has bordered the work with a border giving it a structured appearance. It’s clear that Dijsselhof was really feeling the flowers, drawing not just what he saw, but how he experienced them. This reminds me of the playful simplicity in Cy Twombly's line drawings. Both artists embrace the beauty of the imperfect, the unfinished. There's a real freedom in that, an invitation for us to bring our own interpretations to the work.