Madelieven in het gras

Arend Hendriks made this print of daisies in the grass without a date, and it lives here at the Rijksmuseum. The tonal range is tight, and the marks are dense, like a thicket of tiny dashes. Up close, the texture is all, these repeated etched lines conjure the feeling of being low down in the cool, damp earth, maybe even a bit claustrophobic. You can feel the weight of the greenery, the busyness of the natural world. Look at the cluster of leaves in the middle—see how Hendriks uses the layering of lines to suggest depth and volume? It’s almost as if each leaf is a tiny landscape of its own. It brings to mind the work of Hercules Segers, who also played with texture and tone to create these almost hallucinatory landscapes. Both artists really understood that artmaking is a process of getting lost and hopefully finding your way back, changed.