Molen in een landschap 1910 - 1917

Alexander Shilling made this drawing of a windmill in a landscape using graphite on paper. What strikes me is the immediacy of the marks, the directness, almost like he's wrestling with what he sees. There's a windmill bravely facing the elements on the right, sketched with heavy, dark lines, and on the left, a ghostly echo, a half-erased version. I wonder if Shilling was trying to capture a fleeting moment or a memory of one, as if searching for the right image, the right feeling, through the act of drawing. You can feel the artist’s hand moving quickly, trying to capture the essence of the scene. The lines are tentative, searching, as if Shilling is in conversation with the landscape. What if the real subject is the wind itself, shaping the landscape, the mill, and the artist’s hand? Drawing, like painting, can be a way of chasing something just beyond our grasp, an attempt to pin down the invisible.