Man met hoed en bril 1914

Lodewijk Schelfhout made this print, called 'Man met hoed en bril' or 'Man with hat and glasses' at some point in his lifetime. The lines here are like these scratchy little thoughts trying to find a form, right? The way he's built up the darks, it feels almost sculptural, as if he’s carving out this face from a block of shadow. And that one spot of pure white on the cheek, BAM! Like a sudden realization, or maybe just the way light catches a face for a split second. I love how the hat and glasses give this guy an air of mystery, like he's peering at us, and we're peering right back, trying to figure him out. There's this raw, immediate quality, which reminds me a bit of Kirchner and the German Expressionists, you know, that same search for inner truth, laid bare on the surface. It’s all about the process, the feel of the tool in hand, the push and pull, the scratching and the revealing.