Aantekeningen betreffende glas-in-lood 1878 - 1938

This is a page of script in black ink on paper by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst. It looks like a study for a stained glass window, and the artist is making notes on the colours he wants to use. The handwriting is neat and looping, but the words are close together and at times almost illegible. This makes me think of the way that we can often only half see, or half understand what we are looking at, but how that can still be enough to get a sense of something. The colours he is planning are amazing; light blue, strong blue, dark blue, and orange. He is trying to capture light through colour, and in the final line he describes the shadows of the orange fish. I love the idea of an artist planning something out, trying to get it right but knowing all along that the best things happen when you leave space for chance. Like the way Joan Mitchell's paintings feel like landscapes but they are not really pictures of anything. Art is always a process.