Bouw van een woonhuis 1914 - 1919

This small photograph captures the build of a house by an anonymous artist and is simply entitled, “Bouw van een woonhuis.” As a painter, I look at this image and think about the materials that constitute the walls and roof and I imagine the workers carefully and skillfully constructing this house piece by piece. It makes me consider the materiality of painting – the linen, the gesso, the oil paint, the turpentine – that allows me to build my paintings one brushstroke at a time, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. I wonder what the artist was thinking about when they made this work. Were they thinking about the work as a record, the architecture, the material properties, or were they thinking of something else entirely? Photography and painting are constantly in conversation, exchanging ideas and inspiring creativity across time and place. Every photograph, every painting embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meanings over any single reading.