Portret van Herman Hendrik Maas 1976

Rein Dool made this portrait of Herman Hendrik Maas using pen and ink, and the mark making feels very intuitive, like the artist is thinking on the page. The use of ink allows for a real clarity of line, but Dool hasn't confined himself to pure representation. See how he’s built up tone with these dense hatched marks, especially in the jacket. It's almost like he's sculpting the form out of darkness, letting the light areas emerge from the page itself. I keep thinking about the relationship between these very definite black lines and the blank paper, the dialogue between presence and absence. That hand, held up to the face, it's so delicately rendered. It makes me think of a similar approach by artists like Hockney, who use line in such a distinctive way. Ultimately, it is the ambiguity and the process that makes it such an interesting piece to sit with.