The Old Well 1923

Konstantinos Maleas painted The Old Well with oil on canvas sometime in the early 20th century. It’s like a deconstructed landscape, the kind where you can feel the artist figuring things out as they go along. There's this muted palette, mostly browns and blues, and the paint looks kind of thick, like he was really working it. I can imagine Maleas standing there, squinting at the scene, trying to capture not just what he saw, but also how it felt to be there. What was he thinking when he daubed on that stroke of brown, trying to suggest the weight of the earth? The way he’s rendered the water, with those looping gestures reminds me of Cezanne and his approach to painting water. Artists are constantly riffing off each other, you know? Ultimately painting is about embracing the mess and ambiguity of life. It's about trying to make sense of the world, one brushstroke at a time.