Landschap met een molen 1910 - 1918

Alexander Shilling made this sketch of a landscape with a mill, using graphite or a similar medium, in a small notebook. I love the immediacy of it, the way the marks capture the essence of a place. The sketch is divided across two pages, which gives it this great sense of unfolding, like a story being told. On the left, we see a lighter, more ethereal rendering of trees, almost ghostly in their pale grayness. Then on the right page, the marks get darker, more insistent, describing what seems like a mill, its structure built up through layers of scribbled lines. I think of artists like Guston and Auerbach, who show how much you can do with humble materials. Shilling's sketch reminds us that art isn't about perfection; it's about exploration, about finding new ways of seeing and experiencing the world. It's this openness to possibility, to the unexpected, that makes art so endlessly fascinating.