Skitser af et kranium 1864 - 1941

Niels Larsen Stevns made these skull sketches on paper, and immediately I’m drawn to the process, the searching lines, the way he’s trying to figure out the form. It’s like he’s feeling his way around the contours, not just looking, but almost touching with his eyes. You can really see the hand in this work, the graphite smudging and catching the light. The paper has a life of its own, creased and stained. Look at the way he’s massed the lines around the eye socket in the bottom right, it’s almost frantic, trying to capture the depth, the emptiness. Then look at the arch of the brow above, a simple curve, confident and sure. It’s like a conversation, a back and forth between seeing and knowing. It reminds me a little of the way Philip Guston would work. The lines are unsure but bold, the forms tentative, like a dialogue between the artist and the subject. Art isn’t about answers, it’s about the questions we ask and the marks we make along the way.