Gabriele 2008

Gazmend Freitag drew Gabriele with pen and ink on paper. Look at the scratchy quality of those lines! You can almost feel the pen dragging across the page, each mark accumulating to form this image of a seated woman. I wonder what Freitag was thinking as he made this? There's something vulnerable about the figure, the way she's looking down, almost introspective, as if she's alone in the room. It is interesting how some areas are densely worked with hatching, creating areas of dark tone, while others are left almost bare, letting the white of the paper breathe. It reminds me of some of Egon Schiele's drawings, that same nervous energy in the line work. I love the way that artists can be in an ongoing conversation and exchange ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. Every drawing is a form of embodied expression, allowing for many different ways of seeing, thinking, and experiencing the world.