Willibaldsburg 1936

Jacob Happ made this pencil drawing, Willibaldsburg, sometime around the turn of the century, and you can just feel him feeling the scene, right? You can see how he worked over the paper, layering the landscape like he was building it, mark by mark. I can imagine him out there on location, squinting in the sun, lightly sketching the structure of the medieval castle, and the hills behind. There’s something kind of casual about the whole thing. The marks are tentative, light, as if he’s figuring it all out as he goes along. You can see how he’s tried to capture the volume and scale of the hill beneath, which is really the dominant feature, more so than the fortress itself. The texture of the drawing adds to the effect, a sense of movement and change. It reminds me of some of Cezanne's early landscapes in its loose and expressive quality. These artists are always looking at each other, you know, finding inspiration and new ideas. I like the humility of his approach. In the end, painting is more about process, a way of thinking and feeling and less about fixed outcomes.