Uitzicht op een aan zee gelegen dorp vanaf een schip c. 1936

Cornelis Vreedenburgh made this drawing of a seaside village from a ship, and the first thing that strikes me is the immediacy of it, you know? It's like he's capturing a fleeting moment, a quick sketch on the go. I can almost feel the rocking of the boat beneath his feet as he quickly jots down what he sees. The lines are so economical, so direct. It's a landscape distilled to its bare essentials, not unlike some of the early modernists. I wonder what he was thinking about as he drew this? Was he contemplating the vastness of the sea, or maybe just trying to capture the essence of the village before it disappeared from view? It reminds me that drawing, like painting, can be a form of embodied expression, a way of thinking through feeling. It's like a conversation, really; with the subject, with the medium, with yourself.