Glaciers of Himalayas 1937

Nicholas Roerich gave us these 'Glaciers of Himalayas', and the way he handles the paint, it feels like he's building up layers of emotional weather. Look how the blues of the mountains push against the yellows of the sky. He's not trying to trick us with realism. It's more like he's after the essence of a place, the feeling of being in the Himalayas. The paint isn’t thick, but it’s definitely present, like a memory. It's got this slightly chalky, matte quality which only adds to that sense of a distant past. I get lost in this painting. And those yellow clouds! They're not just decorative. They're like bursts of light, hope, or maybe just plain weirdness, you know? Roerich's paintings of the Himalayas are very distinctive, he’s in conversation with artists like Lawren Harris, who used landscape to explore the spiritual. This piece reminds us that art is always a conversation, a back-and-forth between what we see and how we feel, and between artists across time.