Brief aan Jan Veth Possibly 1904 - 1906

This letter, "Brief aan Jan Veth," was written by Karel Johan Lodewijk Alberdingk Thijm on June 5, 1904. Ink on paper – it’s not painting exactly, but it's mark-making. I imagine Alberdingk Thijm, pen in hand, carefully forming each word, each letter a small gesture, a tiny painting in itself. I wonder what he was thinking, what he wanted to express, and how he felt as he laid down these looping marks. The ink, a dark, fluid medium, contrasts with the pale, fibrous paper. The careful script looks like it contains little pauses, a kind of rhythm, a feeling of time passing. You can see a dance between control and spontaneity. Writing can be a very embodied practice, and handwriting like this even more so. I see in it the history of ideas, of how things connect, and how one artist speaks to another across time.