Ontwerp voor raam in het Noordertransept in de Dom te Utrecht c. 1934

This is Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst’s preparatory sketch for a stained glass window in Utrecht Cathedral, and it's made with crayon. I love the way the image is broken up into these chunky, angular shapes, like a puzzle or an architectural plan. It reminds me that making art is about building, even when it looks like it's just drawing. Look at the face in the upper right corner. It's rendered so simply, almost like a child's drawing. But it's also full of feeling. The colors are muted – browns, reds, blues – but they create a surprisingly vibrant effect. It feels like Holst is wrestling with the materials, trying to find the right balance between representation and abstraction. In the lower left there are these marks that seem to resemble hills or waves. To me, the work as a whole feels like an interesting mix of symbolist and expressionist influences. You could say it has some echoes of someone like Edvard Munch. Ultimately it’s a reminder that art is always in conversation with itself, across time and traditions.