Spruces in the mountains c. 1925

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this drawing of "Spruces in the mountains" using ink. It’s a simple palette, just black ink on white paper, but it’s full of energy, the kind you get when you’re working fast, trying to capture a feeling as much as a scene. Look at how the ink is applied: thick, thin, sometimes scratchy, sometimes smooth. It’s like Kirchner is wrestling with the materials, letting the ink do its thing while also trying to control it. There's this tension between control and chance that makes the drawing so alive. Notice the way the spruces are rendered as almost menacing black shapes against a pale sky. It reminds me that artmaking is a process, a back and forth between intention and accident. Kirchner was part of the Expressionist movement, and you can really see that here in the raw emotion and the way he distorts the landscape to convey a mood. Think of someone like Edvard Munch, another artist who knew how to use simple means to express intense feelings. It’s not about perfect representation; it’s about getting at something deeper.