Mont Sainte-Victoire 1906

Cézanne made this painting of Mont Sainte-Victoire with oil on canvas, and what strikes me is how he builds the form with color. Look how the greens, blues, and ochres aren't just colors, they’re the structure itself. It’s like he’s asking, what if we reconstruct the world through feeling, through the very act of painting? Notice the brushstrokes; they’re not trying to hide. They sit on the surface, little tiles of perception. There's a patch of ochre in the middle ground, a warm, earthy rectangle that anchors the whole scene. It’s not just a field; it's a moment of recognition, a grounding. You could spend hours with a Morandi, another painter of humble motifs, so you learn to see painting as a meditative, open-ended conversation. The real subject is always the painting itself, and its capacity to re-frame how we see.