Figurstudier til Langelinie-billedet 1923 - 1924

This is a pencil sketch by Edvard Weie, one of several studies for a larger painting. It's so slight, really just a few lines, but look how much information Weie manages to convey! On the right, the back of a figure in a hat, the quick strokes suggesting a jacket and scarf. To the left, a jumble of lines that could be a table, or chairs. I love the immediacy of the medium, how the graphite sits right on the surface of the paper. You can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the page. There's a wonderful open-endedness to this sketch, a sense of possibility. Nothing is fixed or fully resolved. The man's hat is a marvel of compressed mark making. It reminds me of other artists like Manet, who have used sketches to capture the fleeting, transient moments of everyday life. It also evokes the way Philip Guston used drawing as a means of thinking through his painting process, embracing the beauty of the unfinished, and the potential for art to be a space of constant experimentation and discovery.