Liggend stel en een vrouw met een parasol c. 1928 - 1930

Otto Verhagen made this drawing, Liggend stel en een vrouw met een parasol, with pencil and watercolour. The artist’s approach is super process-oriented; it’s all about the feel of the thing. He lays down these marks, then lets the colour wash over them. There’s a freshness, a speed about the hand of the artist. It feels like he’s working intuitively, and that looseness, it speaks to me. I love the materiality, the texture, how he leaves the pencil lines exposed and visible, it’s so present. He is not trying to hide anything. Look at how he’s drawn the lines in the man’s suit. They show a real attentiveness to the fall of the material, and how the light hits it. I find that the materiality shapes my emotional experience, there’s an emotional truth that comes out through the drawing. It puts me in mind of Nicole Eisenman, there's something similar about the way both artists look at people.