Huizen aan weerszijden van een kanaal 1890 - 1946

Cornelis Vreedenburgh made this drawing of houses on either side of a canal with graphite on paper. The beautiful thing about drawing is that it's all about process, isn't it? Here, the marks are all so clear, so confidently laid down, and so wonderfully evocative. Look how he uses hatching to build up the tone in the trees and the roofs of the buildings, but leaves the paper bare to suggest the sky and the water. I really like how the reflections are done. See the house on the left? It's like its reflection in the canal is a simplified, slightly abstracted version of itself. It's not about perfect representation, but about capturing the essence of the scene. It reminds me a bit of some of Giacometti's drawings, that same sense of searching and finding the form through a web of lines. Drawing is really an ongoing conversation. It's the artist thinking aloud.