Gabriele on the bamboo bed 2 2008

This small painting, Gabriele on the bamboo bed 2, was made by Gazmend Freitag, maybe in 2008. It's all grays and blacks, with fleshy tones that are both there and not there – and a dash of red. I wonder what it was like for Freitag to make this? I imagine the artist thinking about light and shadow, trying to find the form with these cross-hatching marks. Like, how do you get fleshiness with the barest minimum of means? The texture in the hair is so present, like a dark cloud of feeling that seems to come out of the figure. And then, the way the figure is placed in space, vulnerable and exposed. I think about other painters, like, maybe Egon Schiele, who were also trying to get at something real and raw, like a little secret being revealed. It's like Freitag is saying: "I'm here, I'm human, I'm making marks." And somehow, that’s enough. Paintings like this remind me that we're all in this art conversation together, trying to make sense of things, one brushstroke at a time.