Rivierlandschap met molens 1905

This is a quick pencil sketch of a river landscape with windmills by Willem Cornelis Rip. The composition is split across two pages, one mostly empty, the other a flurry of marks. I love the immediate quality in Rip’s mark making. The windmills and buildings have been captured with a kind of shorthand, the artist only suggesting the forms with a few, well-placed strokes. Look at the heavy sky bearing down on the scene and the thick, almost sculptural marks of the buildings and land, like a child’s drawing where everything is heavily outlined. And then, nothing. The other half of the image is almost entirely blank, as though the artist has left a space for reflection. It reminds me a little of Guston, but also Twombly, or even Maira Kalman, the way that an image can be built from very little. Art is an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas across time, and it is in the gaps and in-between spaces, where ambiguity thrives, that the most interesting conversations can be had.