Twee vogels met lange snavels 1906 - 1945

Reijer Stolk made this sketch of two long-beaked birds sometime before 1945, using what looks like a graphite pencil on paper. It’s all about the process here, isn't it? A kind of loose, searching line that lets us in on the artist's thought process. The surface is raw, immediate; you can almost feel the give of the paper under the artist's hand. These aren't finished objects, but the kind of scribbled thoughts that can lead to something else. Look at the way the lines around the birds head get a bit darker, a bit more defined. It’s like the artist is circling, trying to find the essence of the thing, the birdness of the bird. You know, this makes me think of Cy Twombly, but with feathers. Both artists share that love of the unfinished, the sense that art is more about the journey than the destination. And that’s something I can really get behind.