Studier af oldkristne motiver, samt notater. Apolonari in Classe 1902 - 1905

Niels Larsen Stevns created this watercolor and ink study of early Christian motifs, along with notes, at an unknown date. It's a beautiful mess of loose washes and quick notations, a real window into the artist's thought process. Look at how the colors float, contained by the barest of lines. The paint isn’t trying to be anything other than what it is, just pigment suspended in water, pooling and bleeding into the paper. There's a vulnerability to watercolor. It's hard to control, and Stevns seems to embrace that quality, allowing the medium to lead him. Check out the way he’s scrawled words directly onto the image, mixing text and image. This reminds me of Cy Twombly’s work. Like Twombly, Stevns lets us see his thinking, his erasures, and the raw materiality of his materials. Art is a conversation, and Stevns is right in the middle of it.