Bloem met knoppen, hand met een roos een bij en een panter 1939 - 1941

This drawing by Leo Gestel is a flurry of ideas sketched in pencil. You can see the artist working through the possibilities of his subject, the process right there on the page. The materiality is so simple: pencil on paper. The drawing is like a whisper, tentative and searching. Look at how Gestel renders the panther, its body frozen mid-leap, the graphite lines almost dissolving into the grey of the paper. There's a sense of movement, a barely contained energy, that I find so compelling. It's as if the panther might at any moment vanish back into the ether from which it came. Gestel’s contemporary, Piet Mondrian, also worked through many different styles and subjects. Both artists show us that art isn't about perfect answers, it's about the questions we ask along the way. It's the searching, the striving, that makes it alive.