Sunday Outing (Fishing) c. 1935

Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt made "Sunday Outing (Fishing)" without a date using a crayon. Look at the light and shade. I see it as a study in tone, an exercise in how to capture a scene and a mood using just black and white. I love the scratchy texture, especially in the trees. You can almost feel the crayon dragging across the paper. The artist really lets us in on the process, showing us how the image is built up, mark by mark. It's not about hiding the work, but about celebrating it. I keep coming back to the woman standing in the center, she’s holding a fish! The placement almost bisects the picture plane, but that only serves to reinforce the feeling of an ordinary, perhaps even mundane Sunday outing. It makes me think of other artists like Kathe Kollwitz, who weren’t afraid to use simple materials to create powerful images of everyday life. Art isn’t always about perfection, but about honest expression.