Skitse af planteornament 1906

Niels Larsen Stevns made this sketch of plant ornaments with a pencil on a gridded piece of paper. I love looking at drawings, especially when you can see the grid beneath because it reminds me that everything starts somewhere. It's like Stevns is mapping out an idea, feeling his way through the shapes and rhythms of nature, but also superimposing a structure onto it. You can see the pencil lines are tentative, searching. Look at the looping forms on the right side, it looks as though his pencil hardly touched the page. It’s like a whisper of a line, and how it plays against the darker, more decisive marks in the center. I am always amazed how an artist can create such interesting and compelling forms with so little. It shows the confidence he has to just let the work be what it needs to be. Like Matisse's paper cut-outs, Stevns captures the essence of form with playful confidence. It’s not just about what's depicted, but how it’s depicted – a conversation between observation and imagination.