Curatorial notes
This letter was written in 1919 by Rose Imel. The slightly faded ink has a lightness to it, like watercolour, full of gentle curves and flicks. It reminds me that writing, like painting, is a process of building up marks to create form. Up close, you can see how Imel’s pen has scratched and bitten into the paper, each letter alive with a kind of shaky energy. The words huddle close together, almost overlapping, creating a tight-knit texture that feels intimate, like a whisper. Notice how the ascenders and descenders loop and dance, pushing beyond the ruled lines of the page, breaking the grid a little. It’s this tension between order and chaos that gives the letter its particular rhythm. This makes me think of Cy Twombly, who also treated language as a kind of raw material to be shaped and sculpted. Art, like language, is always a conversation, a back-and-forth between different voices and perspectives. And like any good conversation, it's the pauses, the hesitations, and the moments of uncertainty that make it truly interesting.
