Noa 2015

Alfred Freddy Krupa's "Noa," measuring 40 x 30 cm, is rendered with what looks like graphite or perhaps charcoal on paper. The marks are incredibly delicate, almost like whispers on the surface. You can imagine the artist’s hand moving slowly, deliberately, building up the image of the boy one tiny stroke at a time. Looking at the way the light falls across Noa’s face, there's this incredible softness, a gentleness that comes through in the subtle gradations of tone. I wonder what Krupa was thinking about as he made this piece. Was he trying to capture a specific moment, a fleeting expression? Or was he more interested in the process of translation, of turning a three-dimensional person into a two-dimensional image? There's something so intimate about portraiture. When I look at this piece, I think about other artists who have wrestled with similar questions, like Lucian Freud, for instance. What is it that connects them across time and space? And what does it mean to keep this conversation going, to keep exploring the possibilities of representation, of seeing and being seen? Painting, for me, is this ongoing process of discovery, a way of making sense of the world, and of my place in it.