Sculptuur van een dier c. 1890 - 1922

This is Johanna van de Kamer’s drawing of a sculpture of an animal. It was made with pencil on paper, so you can see the marks, the process, the decisions made to get here. The way the graphite sits on the page, it’s not trying to trick you into thinking this drawing *is* the thing itself, it’s just showing you how the animal looks. Like an x-ray in a way, all of the marks build up to give it a sense of weight. I like the density of the shading around the animal’s body, and how this contrasts with the open space around it which makes the animal look as though it is in mid-flight. It’s a confident drawing but at the same time it’s clear that she is figuring it out as she goes along. It reminds me of the way Käthe Kollwitz used charcoal to capture movement and feeling. Art, after all, is an ongoing conversation. We are all just trying to figure it out.