Valjda Lajos Dotted House, 1936, Iol on Paper, 44,5x50cm 1936

Vajda Lajos made "Dotted House" in 1936 with oil on paper. Imagine him, brush in hand, meticulously building up the image dot by dot, a kind of pointillist vision of home. I sympathize with Lajos. I can imagine him, patiently layering these tiny marks. Look how the dots create this shimmering effect, this pulsating field around the solid forms of the house. There's something both comforting and unsettling about this image. The colour palette is muted - blues, greens, yellows, browns, but their juxtaposition is so sharp. That dark shadowy area, heavy with dots, is that a tree or an encroaching darkness? It reminds me of a memory fading, or a dream being reconstructed. It’s like he's asking, what makes a home? Is it the structure, the memory, the feeling, or is it something more elusive? Lajos builds up these uncertainties with each and every dot. It reminds me a little of Hilma af Klint’s work, with the geometry and interest in the spiritual. This piece is an ongoing conversation about how we construct our realities through mark-making.