From the Block: Dad 2013

Alfred Freddy Krupa made this moving portrait of his dad with a pencil on paper. The image emerges from a network of hatched lines. You can almost hear the scratching of the pencil as the artist coaxes his father's image into being. I wonder what it was like for Krupa to create this. The subtle gradations of light and shadow across the face seem to point to a patient observation, a careful recording of each line and wrinkle. The eyes, though simply rendered, are deeply expressive. Maybe he was thinking about the weight of family, memory, and the passage of time. The raw, unrefined quality of the paper adds to the intimacy of the work. It feels like we're looking at a page torn straight from the artist's sketchbook. A reminder that every mark, every gesture, is part of an ongoing conversation, a dialogue between the artist and his subject, between seeing and feeling.