Sydfransk landskab 1929

Vilhelm Lundstrom made this landscape of southern France with what looks like pencil on paper. I like to imagine Lundstrom outside somewhere, squinting in the Mediterranean light, trying to capture this scene. He's making all these marks, building up the landscape with short, hatched lines. He is trying to find the essence of a place, simplifying it down to its basic shapes and tones. There's something so honest about using pencil – it's immediate, direct. I can see the hand of the artist moving across the page, feeling the contours of the land. It reminds me of Cezanne, also obsessed with reducing nature to geometric forms. I bet Lundstrom was thinking about him too. Maybe all artists are just trying to answer the questions posed by artists who came before them? It's all one big conversation, a way of seeing and feeling that gets passed down. Painting, drawing - it's not just about what we see, but how we see.