Landschap met een kerktoren 1905

Willem Cornelis Rip made this pencil drawing, Landschap met een kerktoren, probably in a sketchbook. Look at the speed of that mark-making! I can imagine him trying to capture the essence of a landscape with just a few strokes. I bet he was standing somewhere, maybe a field, squinting his eyes, trying to capture the light. He scratched, he smudged, maybe he erased, you can see it all there in the ghost marks. That central figure with a hat might be Rip himself, and the church tower a distant beacon. Or it might be some random farmer. The beauty here lies in its incompleteness, its openness to interpretation. There is a real exchange happening; it makes you want to grab a pencil and have a go yourself. Like a painter’s version of call and response, an ongoing conversation of mark-making.