Aardappelrooiers op het land 1925 - 1927

Leo Gestel made this drawing of potato harvesters with black chalk on paper. Look at how the artist layers and smudges the chalk to create a sort of blurry vision that suggests the hard work and toil of the field. The figures emerge with heavy outlines, hunched over, their gestures caught in a loop of labor. I think about the artist standing in the field, breathing the air, feeling the weight of the task at hand. Were they thinking about Millet? About the Dutch tradition of painting the land and its people? The sky seems heavy with charcoal marks. The surface is soft, almost like velvet, but the image is tough. You can feel the scratching and rubbing that shaped each figure. Gestel is part of a long line of artists who grapple with the real, the felt, the seen. Artists are always in conversation with each other, riffing on themes, and pushing at the edges of what paint–or in this case, chalk–can do. It's a way of thinking out loud, making visible the invisible threads that connect us.