Zelfportret: B-1-1, 13 februari Possibly 1942

This self-portrait was made on February 13th 1942, with pencil on paper, by Cor van Teeseling. The way the artist used delicate cross-hatching to create the light and shadow feels very intuitive to me, as if he was thinking through the process of artmaking itself. Looking closer, I see how the colour and the texture really shape my emotional experience of the artwork. The single sienna tone is quite affecting and combined with the paper texture, evokes a sense of the past, like faded memory. The artist leaves the background blank, putting all the focus on the expression in the face and in the fall of the clothing at the neck. Note the marks above the head, like erasures. The self-portrait makes me think of other artists like Lucian Freud who have explored similar themes of introspection and vulnerability through portraiture. In the end, art invites us to consider multiple interpretations and to embrace the ambiguity of human experience.