En plein air at -6c 2016

Alfred Freddy Krupa made this watercolor painting, En plein air at -6c, probably outside, in the cold, brrr! And you can tell he didn’t mess around. The paint is really flowing on the page. It’s mostly black ink, but there are touches of blue and gray – like he was trying to catch the light on the snow. I love the way the ink bleeds out at the top, making this hazy, atmospheric effect. Look at those dark trees in the foreground! They feel so graphic and immediate, but also like the memory of a tree, not a real tree, right? The lines are so expressive, like a quick sketch. It reminds me of Brice Marden’s drawings, where the line is everything, but it’s also nothing like Marden, because this is a place, a landscape. This piece shows how much you can do with so little. It’s all about capturing a feeling, a moment, not necessarily a place.