Skovvej. Farvestudie 1930s

Edvard Weie made this watercolour, ‘Skovvej. Farvestudie,’ at an unknown date, and it’s now here at the SMK. I love the way Weie has captured a sense of place with such simple means; like he’s saying so much with so little. The washes of colour overlap and bleed into each other, suggesting foliage and sky. Look at the upper left corner – the dark blues and purples feel almost like a storm cloud gathering. You can almost feel the dampness in the air. The paint is applied so thinly in parts, allowing the paper to show through, giving the work an ethereal quality. I like the contrast between the very controlled marks and the more gestural, free-flowing areas. It reminds me a little of Cezanne's watercolours, where he was also trying to capture the essence of a landscape with minimal means. In both cases, there is an understanding of art as an ongoing exchange of ideas across time.