Gestileerde bloem in een vierkant c. 1901

Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof made this pencil drawing of a stylized flower in a square at an unknown date. I can imagine Dijsselhof sitting in his studio, maybe with some music on, lightly sketching the outlines of this flower. It's a tentative start, a search for form. Look at the delicate, almost hesitant lines. It reminds me of the kind of preliminary sketches I do, where I'm just trying to find the essence of the thing I want to paint. It’s not about perfection; it’s about exploration. The way Dijsselhof frames the flower within a square, it gives it a sense of order, a structure. It makes you think of artists like Mondrian, who were also trying to find harmony through geometry. It’s cool how artists, even across different times, are always riffing off each other, in a way. It's the initial spark of creativity and the quiet contemplation that makes this drawing special.