Zana and Lume 2013

Gazmend Freitag painted “Zana and Lume,” in 2015 with oil on canvas. I really like how Freitag's colours are close in value, like a low hum that lets the forms emerge gently. This feels true to life, right? The painting is about seeing, but also about the feel of being somewhere, the oil kind of scumbled on, wet into wet. Look at the brushstrokes around the woman’s hair, how they catch the light. The surface has that almost waxy bloom you get with oils, not too shiny. It’s like he’s painting the atmosphere as much as the figures, this sense of a shared moment. The background is more or less abstract. It reminds me a little bit of Fairfield Porter, how he painted his friends and family in their everyday lives. Ultimately, it's the ambiguity that I find compelling. Like a memory, it’s vivid, but also slightly out of reach.