Adriatic touristic view 2013

Alfred Freddy Krupa made this watercolor, "Adriatic touristic view" sometime around 2013. You can feel the handmade process in the way the watery pigments bloom across the rough paper. It's like catching a fleeting impression, a memory dissolving into the light. Look at the way Krupa uses these blues and greens. So transparent, almost like he's staining the paper rather than covering it. It gives the whole scene an ethereal quality, like looking through a heat haze. The strokes are laid down with a quick, sure hand, especially in the foliage of the tree. See how they bleed into each other, creating a sense of depth and atmosphere? It reminds me a bit of some of the quick plein air sketches that Cezanne used to make. There's this sense of trying to capture the essence of a place, rather than just a photographic likeness. It's a conversation between the artist, the landscape, and the very stuff of paint itself. It feels honest, intimate, and open to interpretation.