Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1923 - 1927

This is a letter, "Brief aan Philip Zilcken," written in 1922 by Alphonse Stengelin. It is not a painting, but I see the way the ink bleeds into the paper as a kind of mark-making. Look at the top right corner where the date is written, Sateigny 27 Avril 1922, see how the Avril curls back on itself? It is kind of beautiful. Stengelin's script is elegant, but it also feels hasty, as though he is keen to get his message down. As a painter, I love to see the traces of the artist's hand, it feels so intimate. The letter is a record of a relationship between two people, Stengelin and Philip Zilcken, so in this way it reminds me of the collages of Kurt Schwitters, which are also often made up of fragments of everyday life. I like to imagine that both artists collected their materials in the streets of the city, turning what they found into art. In the end, art is what you make of it. It embraces ambiguity, and that's why it’s so rewarding.