Ontwerp voor een penning (?) van gips met hert 1876 - 1947

Lambertus Zijl crafted this plaster design for a medal with a deer, but when exactly, we can't say. I imagine Zijl in his studio, wrestling with the soft, yielding plaster, building up the form of the deer with a careful hand. It's a dance between control and surrender, isn't it? You start with an idea, a vision, but the material has its own say. The plaster probably resisted, crumbled, maybe even cracked, forcing Zijl to adapt, improvise. There’s a quiet strength in the way Zijl captured the animal's stance, the curve of its neck, the delicate angle of its head. But it's not just about representation, is it? It's about feeling, about the empathy Zijl had for the animal. The whole thing reminds me of works by other sculptors like, say, Georg Kolbe, who also tried to capture the essence of the natural world. We artists are always talking to each other across time, trading ideas. I love that there's no one way to see or feel a thing.