Landscape With A Herdsman 1920 - 1930

Jozef Hanula made this landscape with oil on canvas. It’s a tonal work dominated by earthy browns, reds, and greens. I can only imagine the kind of headspace you need to be in to make a painting like this. I see the artist building up the landscape, stroke by stroke, with a kind of methodical determination, right? Like, each dab of paint is a decision, a small act of world-building. The paint looks pretty thin, which probably let him work and rework areas over a period of days. Look at those pinks in the foreground. He’s not just painting what he sees but finding ways to put all the sensations of the scene on the canvas. Jozef is in a conversation with other landscape painters, definitely. And, as viewers, we get to eavesdrop on that conversation, piecing together the clues he left behind in the brushstrokes. Painting’s a kind of embodied expression that embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations.