Still life. Bananas. 1911

Martiros Sarian painted this still life, bananas in an unknown year with what looks like gouache or tempera. You can see the brushstrokes, there's not much blending, so Sarian probably worked relatively quickly, embracing the nature of painting as a process. There's something interesting about the colour. Sarian has painted the bananas with a yellowish-cream colour, the apples in reds and oranges, lemons in light yellow, and then he's used a cool gray to suggest the shadows that fall across the gray surface. There is a limited palette of colours, but the artist has used each colour to its maximum potential. Look closely at the shadow beneath the lemons. See how the colour isn't a pure gray but instead seems to be mixed with a tiny amount of the yellow. These small details, an awareness of colour, are what can elevate a painting. Think of Sarian as having a conversation with artists like Matisse. Both artists were less interested in faithfully depicting the world than in exploring their subjective experience of it. With both, there is a sense that painting is a way of thinking and feeling rather than simply seeing.