Ung pige med hat, profil t.v. 1907 - 1908

Here is a portrait of a young girl in a hat, sketched by Harald Giersing. It’s all lines, see? Fuzzy marks in charcoal or pencil, washed over with watery blues and pinks. I can imagine Giersing circling around the girl, trying to get her just so. He’s feeling his way through her profile, almost caressing her with the tip of his pencil. See the hat, how it’s not quite there, not fully formed? That’s where the energy is, right? In the trying. In the almost. Like he’s asking himself, what makes a hat a hat? What makes a girl a girl? He doesn’t quite land it, and that’s what makes it so alive. It reminds me of other painters, of course. Everyone is talking to everyone, across time. All of us, just trying to figure out how to make sense of the world, one painting at a time. It's a kind of conversation, and, for me, it's never finished.