Brief aan Jan Veth Possibly 1904 - 1919

This letter, made by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst in 1904, uses ink on paper. The fluid strokes of the pen create a dance across the page. You can sense the rhythm of his thoughts as he puts pen to paper. It’s like the written word becomes a kind of drawing. The writing isn’t perfectly neat. There’s a certain energy in the way the letters lean and curve, which gives the letter a sense of intimacy. The ink varies in darkness. In some places it’s a solid black, in others it's faded to grey, perhaps suggesting the changing pressures and speeds as he moved across the page. It mirrors the kind of variations you get in a painting, where the thickness of the paint creates light and shadow. Holst’s letter reminds me of the raw expressiveness you see in the work of Cy Twombly. Both share a certain freedom in mark-making, an embrace of imperfection. Art doesn't always have to be about precision. Sometimes it’s about capturing a feeling, a moment, a thought in its most immediate form.