Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1907 - 1911

This is a letter, probably written with a dip pen, sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century by A. Smit Kleine-Fastré. Look at the way the text leans forward, eager to communicate. You can almost feel the scrape of the nib across the paper, imagine the concentration, the careful hand. I sympathize with Kleine-Fastré. Writing a letter is a bit like painting, isn't it? Each stroke, each word, a deliberate act, yet also a surrender to the flow. The ink pools and thins, creating texture, depth. I wonder what they were thinking about as they wrote, who they were writing to, what news they were sharing. You can feel the writer's presence in every carefully formed word. Painting and writing are about mark-making. Every mark is a decision, a gesture, a breath held and released. Smit Kleine-Fastré is in conversation with every artist who has ever put pen to paper, or brush to canvas. It's an exchange of ideas, feelings, stories. And that's what keeps art alive, this constant dialogue across time.