Brief aan Philip Zilcken before 1928

This letter to Philip Zilcken by Rose Imel, well, it wasn’t made with paint, but it is a kind of drawing, isn’t it? It’s all lines and gestures. I can imagine Imel, perhaps in a moment of quiet urgency, hunched over this page, the pen scratching against the paper. I feel for her, you know? It's a personal letter. I think it could be easy to see the writing on the page as just information, but if you look closely at the lines, the way they curve and lean, you can almost feel her hand moving across the paper. I bet the artist might have been thinking about all sorts of things. I mean, in a way, writing and painting aren't so different. The artist is using a tool to make marks on a surface, trying to get something from inside of them to the outside world. So yeah, I could see this as a painting too. Artists learn from each other, right? We’re always in conversation across time. And sometimes, the most interesting stuff happens when you blur the lines between different ways of making. It allows for multiple interpretations and meaning over fixed or definitive readings.