Brief aan Héloïse Bernard-Bodin 1878 - 1941

This is a letter from Emile Bernard, to Héloïse Bernard-Bodin, written with ink on paper. The loose, informal marks are full of character, like a drawing made while thinking aloud. Bernard’s purple ink script dances across the page, creating a field of tiny gestures that make up the whole. Look how the lines loop and curve, sometimes thick, sometimes thin, capturing the movement of his hand as he wrote. He repeats and varies certain forms and letter shapes with a playful freedom. The letter feels raw and direct, as if we’re looking at the artist’s unedited thoughts, much like the surrealist automatic writing. It reminds me of the work of Cy Twombly, whose scribbled lines and text fragments also feel like direct translations of thought and feeling. Bernard isn’t trying to create a perfect or polished image. Instead, he seems more interested in capturing the flow of his thoughts, embracing the imperfections and irregularities that make his work feel so alive.