Landschap 1890 - 1946

Here’s a peek into a notebook page, by Cornelis Vreedenburgh, held at the Rijksmuseum. It’s a landscape, barely there, just pencil on paper. I can see Vreedenburgh, out in the fields, quickly sketching, trying to get the light, the shapes, the feeling of the place down on the page before it’s gone. I see how the lines are tentative, searching. Is that a road? Are those haystacks? It doesn't really matter. The whole image is a feeling. You know, I often think about the space between seeing something and then trying to represent it. It's exciting, fraught with difficulty, and it is so, so beautiful. This drawing is like a whisper. Think of other artists who have worked with pared-down materials – Agnes Martin, for example, with her subtle pencil lines. Vreedenburgh's quiet piece reminds me that art-making is an ongoing conversation. It is about how to find the essence of an experience and then share it, raw and unfiltered, with others.