Udkast til Poseidonbilledet 1917 - 1919

Edvard Weie made this study for a Poseidon picture with charcoal on paper. I love how Weie coaxes a composition out of a jumble of marks. Look at the lower center of the drawing – see how the charcoal clumps together to create a dark, almost impenetrable thicket of lines? I can imagine Weie, leaning in, charcoal in hand, wrestling with the image, trying to give form to the sea god. The rubbings and erasures give the drawing a provisional quality, like a thought still in process. It makes me think about other artists like him, like de Kooning, Giacometti, or Guston, always searching, always pushing the limits of what a picture can be. There is a generosity to this kind of open-ended inquiry, where meaning isn't fixed, but emerges through a sustained engagement with the act of making. It reminds us that art is a conversation, a back-and-forth across time and space, where artists build upon each other’s discoveries and experimentations.