Studie van een blad en een takje 1874 - 1945

Carel Adolph Lion Cachet made this study of a leaf and a twig sometime in his life, probably with charcoal, maybe even graphite. I'm picturing Cachet outside, or near a window, carefully scrutinizing the subtle forms of the natural world, and trying to capture it. I bet he was thinking about Dutch still life painting at the time. There's this quality of focused observation, where the mundane is rendered almost sacred through attention and craft. The marks are smudgy, not too precise, and slightly mysterious. Look at the soft textures he creates. The blank areas are as important as the shaded ones, letting the negative space breathe. I imagine him stepping back, squinting, reworking areas until it all balanced. There's a real joy in the process, a delight in exploring tone and form, that makes me want to grab a pencil and start sketching. Artists, we're always in conversation, with the past, the present, and maybe even the future.