Dorp met molen en kerk in heuvellandschap 1924

In this landscape by Jo Bezaan, you can see the hatching marks, a kind of code, that build up the image of a village. There’s a road right in front of us, a windmill to the left, and a church steeple rising up in the distance. I imagine Bezaan standing there, thinking: how can I make this landscape breathe? What do I want to say about the way the light hits the fields? Look how the lines become shadows, the way the diagonal marks build up a feeling of depth. It's like the landscape is emerging from the paper, one line at a time. I think of other artists who’ve tried to capture the essence of a place, the way Van Gogh made those fields vibrate. There's a connection across time, artists trying to figure out how to make marks that feel like something real. It's all about the ongoing conversation artists have with each other, picking up ideas, pushing them further, trying to make something new that still feels true.