Studie c. 1916 - 1945

Reijer Stolk made this pencil sketch, Studie, on paper sometime before 1945; it's currently housed at the Rijksmuseum. You know, sometimes the most fascinating things are sketches, because you can see the artist thinking. In the top left corner, we see this little diagram noting the colors: red, blue, and white. It’s like he’s planning something out, almost like a recipe. Below that, the larger sketch gives us this circular form, a kind of vortex maybe, with these scribbled lines and shapes. There's a note that says "brain", and it makes you wonder, what was Stolk trying to capture? It's as if he was trying to capture a thought. This piece reminds me of Cy Twombly's playful explorations of line and form, where the process is so visible, so raw. The materiality of the graphite on paper, the directness of the marks, it’s all about capturing a fleeting idea. I'm drawn to the idea of art as a conversation, a space of ambiguity and possibility.