Prentbriefkaart aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1927

This postcard to Philip Zilcken by Ferdinand-Sigismund Bac uses soft focus and a monochrome palette, giving it a wistful, dreamlike quality. It’s all about atmosphere, about what the light does, and how the shadows play. Artmaking is like that, chasing after something elusive, something you can feel but not quite grasp. Look at the rough texture of the stone wall, and then the almost ghostly figure of the statue in the niche, caught between light and shadow. It's the layering that does it for me. The eye’s drawn to the statue, but then you notice the creeping vines on either side, softening the edges of the stone. It’s as though the artist is inviting us to wander in, to get lost in this little corner of the world. There’s something here of early 20th-century photography. Like Stieglitz maybe, in the way the image evokes a mood, a feeling, more than it describes a scene. That's what’s so great about art, right? It's not about fixed meanings, but about opening up a space for feeling, for dreaming, for just letting your mind wander.