Boomtoppen c. 1944 - 1990

Kees Stoop made this tiny, delicate landscape using etching, and it’s like he's captured a whole world in miniature. I imagine him, bent over the plate, meticulously scratching in those lines. It's almost like he's building the forest one tiny mark at a time. Look at the way he suggests depth with those layers of trees, the way the light filters through the branches. You know, it's not just about what's there, it's about what's implied, what's hidden in the shadows. Stoop's got this thing for landscapes, and he’s not alone. Artists like, say, the Impressionists were always trying to capture the fleeting beauty of the natural world. The more I look the more I think about the way artists borrow from each other, riff off each other's ideas, like a big, ongoing conversation across time. Each artist adds their own voice, their own accent, their own way of seeing.