Hoofd van een man met een bril c. 1916

Reijer Stolk made this graphite drawing, Head of a Man with Glasses, sometime between 1910 and 1945. Looking at these searching, looping lines, I imagine Stolk with his eyes fixed on the subject, his hand trying to keep up. The glasses are just scribbles, echoes of circles, maybe of his breath condensing on the glass. It is so tenderly hesitant and the hatching feels like a gentle caress. The overall effect is less about representation and more about…searching. I see something of Kokoschka in this work, that same interest in the expressive potential of line, but Stolk is doing his own thing. He is embracing the imperfect, the provisional, as a way of understanding the world around him. He is not after a perfect likeness. He’s after something else, something more elusive. It makes me want to pick up a pencil and start searching too!