Nu faldt Efteraaret paa 1928

Fritz Syberg made this ink drawing, "Nu faldt Efteraaret paa", whose date is unknown. It’s this crazy landscape built up through Syberg’s frantic lines. They’re like scribbles, but with a purpose. It makes me think about artmaking as a big experiment, a process where you're just trying to figure things out as you go. Look at the sky. The rain seems to come down at an angle, rendered with these long diagonal marks. They're so simple, but they give the whole scene a feeling of movement. Then, closer to the ground, the reeds and the water are depicted with a more horizontal, wavering stroke that gives this whole sense of being windswept. Syberg clearly knew his way around a pen. It reminds me a bit of the drawings of Van Gogh, all these expressive, scratchy lines. Art is like a conversation between artists and across time. There is no one way to see this.