Brief aan Jan Veth Possibly 1905 - 1912

Hendrick Peter Godfried Quack wrote this letter to Jan Veth in Amsterdam, back in 1905. Imagine him there with his pen, scratching these words onto the page. The script is tight, urgent, like he’s got a lot to say and not much time. I feel his hand moving across the paper, the ink bleeding into the fibers. What was he thinking, what was on his mind as he formed each letter? Maybe he paused, searching for the right word, or maybe the words just flowed out of him like a river. The loops and curves of his handwriting remind me of some of Cy Twombly's mark-making. I suppose letters are just abstract expressionism in disguise. It's like Hendrick is in conversation with Jan, sharing ideas, maybe disagreeing, maybe agreeing. Painting’s like that too, a constant back-and-forth, a dialogue across time and space. Each stroke, each color, a response to something that came before, a question for what's to come. And just like that, we're all part of this messy, beautiful conversation.