Aangemeerd zeilschip aan een kade 1900 - 1931

This pencil drawing of a moored sailing ship by Willem Bastiaan Tholen shows us the bare bones of how an image comes to be. It is like the first step in an exciting journey. The texture is raw, and you can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the page. Look at the sail, a block of horizontal lines, built up, one after the other. There’s no attempt to hide the process. Each mark is visible, a testament to the act of creation. The lines vibrate with the energy of the artist's hand and mind. It reminds me a little of the drawings of Alfred Kubin, another artist who understood the power of the monochrome image to evoke form and atmosphere. Like Kubin, Tholen seems to embrace the unfinished, the ambiguous. The sketch feels more like a question than an answer, a glimpse into the artist’s thought process.