Studie c. 1901

This drawing by Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof appears to have been made with charcoal or graphite on lined paper. It's a dark field, worked over and over, with the ghost of a geometric design peeking through. I feel for the artist here, I really do. The way he’s layered and pressed into the paper, trying to bring something out, something he can’t quite reach. You can almost see him thinking: more pressure, more layers, maybe *this* will do it. There’s something so intimate about seeing the residue of an artist’s struggle, the way the material holds the evidence of their search. You know, it reminds me of the drawings of Agnes Martin, but with a darker, more urgent energy. It's like he's wrestling with the surface, trying to conjure something into being. And in the end, it’s that very struggle that makes the drawing so compelling. It’s this tension between the hidden and revealed which makes art so exciting - like a conversation, always evolving.