Sunrise on the James Range 1944

Albert Namatjira made "Sunrise on the James Range" with watercolor, and what grabs me first is how immediate the process feels. The brushwork isn't hidden, you can see the build up of colour that lets the light in around those looming forms. Looking closer, there's a push and pull between the soft washes of the sky and the sharper, almost etched details of the mountains. See how Namatjira uses these tiny, dry brushstrokes to define the peaks and ridges? It’s like he’s mapping out the terrain, one careful stroke at a time. I’m reminded of Cézanne, who was also obsessed with rendering the weight and mass of mountains. There's a real conversation happening between the seen and the felt, the observed and the imagined. It shows that a painting can be both a window onto the world and a record of the artist's own experience. There's no right or wrong way to see it.