Annotatie 1886 - 1923

George Hendrik Breitner made this drawing, Annotatie, and it's now in the Rijksmuseum, a place I love to visit. Looking at the off-white page, I can just make out the ghost of an image. It reminds me of those moments when you're sketching, trying to capture something fleeting, and the lines are barely there, a whisper of form. I can imagine Breitner working quickly, trying to catch a glimpse of something before it disappeared. It's interesting how these almost invisible marks can be so evocative. It’s as if he's inviting us to participate in the act of seeing, to fill in the blanks with our own imagination. In art making, it can be liberating to embrace the unfinished, the uncertain. It is after all, an ongoing conversation.