Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1904 - 1918

This is a letter to Philip Zilcken, from 1908, made with ink on paper. Look at how the ink moves across the page, how the artist’s hand controlled the pen to make these marks! Each word is an abstract gesture, a little drawing in itself. You can almost feel the rhythm and speed of the writing. The strokes are thin and dark against the paper. The texture of the page seems smooth, but I bet if you were to touch it, you would feel the slight indentations left by the pen. Each word builds up and relates to the others around it, in a similar way to how I might build up layers of paint to create an image. Notice how the flourishes and loops connect the letters, creating a dance of lines across the page. It is almost like a Jackson Pollock painting, but with language! This act of writing, of communicating thoughts and ideas through the physical act of mark-making, really resonates with me. You could almost compare it to the work of Cy Twombly, the way the line communicates more than just language, but also emotion and feeling.