Marcel Döhne 2019

Gazmend Freitag drew this portrait of Marcel Döhne with pencil on paper. Look at the way he's built up the tones, layering those delicate marks to create this really compelling image. I'm drawn to the area around the neck where the shading is built up using these almost frantic, parallel lines. There’s a real tension there between the need to define the form and the energy of the mark making. It’s like Freitag is wrestling with the image, trying to capture something essential about the sitter, not just their likeness. The lines are more controlled around the face and hair, but there’s still a sense of that underlying energy, as though the whole image could dissolve back into pure mark-making at any moment. It reminds me of some of Alice Neel's portraits, where the subject is rendered with such directness and honesty. Ultimately, portraiture is about more than just representation, it’s about the relationship between the artist and the sitter, and the way that relationship is mediated through the act of drawing.