Scalcz Bridge in Venice 2012

Gazmend Freitag made this painting, "Scalcz Bridge in Venice", and it’s just full of these delicious, juicy brushstrokes, laid on thick and buttery. The colors are rich, but not too precious—sort of Venetian light, with a slightly scumbled sky. I can almost feel Freitag there, pushing the paint around, trying to capture the fleeting essence of light on water, of buildings stacked up against the sky. I can see him working—maybe standing in front of the scene, or maybe from memory, layering on the blues and greens of the canal, then pulling the eye up towards the buildings. It’s a struggle, right? How do you get that feeling of Venice, that hazy, dreamlike quality, onto a flat surface? I think he’s after that feeling of being in a place where everything shimmers. It’s like all painters—we’re always in conversation with each other, riffing on the same themes, trying to say something new with this old, messy medium. Painting is a form of embodied expression, embracing the ambiguity of vision. Every painting is a translation; there's always room for multiple readings.