Zittend meisje

Huib Luns made this drawing, Zittend Meisje, with graphite, right here in the Rijksmuseum. Look at how Luns describes form with short, scribbled lines. It reminds me that artmaking is a conversation, a kind of back-and-forth between intention and accident. The texture is built up from many delicate marks, giving the whole image a soft, hazy quality, like a memory. Notice the way Luns uses hatching to create shadow and volume, especially around the girl's face and dress. See how the dress fades into the background? It’s as if the figure is emerging from the paper, her identity still in formation. The open, loose handling of the graphite in Luns work echoes the expressive mark making of someone like Odilon Redon, who also used charcoal and lithography to create dreamlike images. Like Redon, Luns embraces ambiguity, inviting us to bring our own interpretations to the image.