Old Town Ozalj 2012

Alfred Freddy Krupa made this sumi ink painting, Old Town Ozalj, on paper. I'm imagining Freddy with his brush, and the dark, wet marks he's making. It's like he's coaxing this townscape out of a memory, right? The way he's used the ink, so fluid and immediate, it gives the whole scene a kind of ghostly presence. It's not about detail, but more about feeling the place. I can see the rooflines and the windows, but they're all kind of dissolving into each other, like a dream. That big, dark form looming over everything… it could be a tree, or maybe a storm cloud. There's so much ambiguity! He's got a great calligraphic quality here, where each stroke seems to carry a ton of weight. Painters have been borrowing from each other for centuries, right? This reminds me of some Chinese landscape paintings. Painters, we're always looking, always learning. It’s a big conversation across time.