Zana and Lume 2013

Gazmend Freitag made this oil painting, Zana and Lume, and he built the image with visible brushstrokes in blues, reds and browns. You can see the artist building up the forms, shifting them, deciding and re-deciding. I wonder what Freitag was thinking when he made this piece? Did these women exist or did he invent them? They feel very real. The paint is applied in a thin layer, which allows the colors underneath to vibrate. This helps create the image. It’s like he’s conjuring them up, bringing them into being through the act of painting. Look at the way the light hits the woman's hair in the foreground, how it seems to glow, like a halo, maybe inspired by the old masters? Artists are always in conversation, looking, responding, and keeping the dialogue going. It's pretty cool how these paintings can be so open-ended and say so much, even though they aren't explicit.