Pieter Holstein 1970

Frank Lodeizen made this drawing, titled *Pieter Holstein,* sometime in the middle of the last century. It’s rendered with very direct, dry marks, a shorthand language of zigzags and jots in charcoal, I guess. I love that Lodeizen doesn’t fuss with the marks; he lets them stand, raw and a little awkward, against the off-white paper. Look at the top line, meant to suggest a mountain range. Notice how the texture of the paper catches the charcoal, leaving a kind of gritty residue, like dry underbrush or a rocky terrain. The shapes almost become letters, glyphs in some forgotten alphabet. See how these marks spread and splay? It’s so unpretentious, the opposite of slick perfection. I’m reminded of Guston’s late drawings, where the clunky marks declare themselves as marks, resisting any easy illusion. It shows me that art is a process. It's about embracing the messy, imperfect, and beautifully unresolved.