Prentbriefkaart aan de familie Willem Bogtman before 1935

This postcard to the Willem Bogtman family is made with ink on paper. You can see the urgent sweep of the handwriting moving across the card like a series of rapid thoughts and emotions, capturing a fleeting moment in time, a personal, diaristic impulse. I can imagine Ab Bogtman sitting at a table, perhaps in a café, quickly scribbling down his impressions, the words tumbling out as he tries to capture the essence of his experience on paper. He’s probably thinking about his family back home. I bet it was really important for him to share his thoughts, to let them know he was thinking of them. It’s a gesture that feels intimate, a whisper across space and time. There’s something very vulnerable and human about this need to connect, a desire to bridge the distance between himself and his loved ones. This is how artists converse. They translate ideas into form, inspiring future makers to do the same. This is what painting is all about: embracing ambiguity and uncertainty.