Studie af ørn 1864 - 1941

Niels Larsen Stevns made this sketch of an eagle with pencil on paper. I’m thinking about the fleeting nature of a sketch like this; a moment in time. Larsen Stevns is trying to capture the essence of the eagle, its movement, its spirit, its form, through the most minimal of means. Those lines are so alive! They remind us of the energy of the hand that drew them. It's as though the artist is saying, "Here is what I saw; it’s an eagle, but it's also just a set of marks on a page." He probably wasn't thinking of the final product, but rather the process of seeing and translating that vision onto paper. It's all about the immediacy, the vulnerability, the artist opening himself to the world and letting the image emerge through his hand. It’s this conversation between the artist and his subject that I find so compelling - how looking can become a form of making.