Brief aan Marisa Quanjer Possibly 1938

This note, "Brief aan Marisa Quanjer," was composed by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst in 1938. It's all script, but in a way, handwriting is like a painting. Look at the looping curves and thorny angles, the way the words huddle together and then stretch out—each letter a little gesture. I wonder what it was like to put pen to paper, what he might have been thinking? Holst was a Dutch artist, so I imagine he was writing in Dutch. I wonder if he was thinking about other languages when he wrote this? Maybe that’s why his marks have such character. You know, every artist is indebted to a community of others. We are constantly inspired, encouraged, challenged, and moved by those who have come before us. Like writers, painters share ideas across time, taking up particular themes and making them new. The meaning comes not only from the image itself, but our experience of it. It's a conversation.