Cranes, Landscape from Meadow 1905

Józef Chełmoński made "Cranes, Landscape from Meadow" with oil on canvas, and I bet he was thinking about the big picture. The brushstrokes are all loose and shaggy, like they’re trying to catch the wind. The land and sky get equal billing here, and the cranes feel less like the subject of the painting and more like a part of it, like a dark scrawl in the sky. I see a kind of melancholy in the palette, all browns and greys. It reminds me of a rainy afternoon, the kind that makes you want to curl up with a book. When I look at this painting, I think about Constable, and I wonder if Chełmoński was looking at him too. How do you capture movement on a flat surface? You've gotta get the feel of it, not just the look of it. I think about how other painters influence me and I hope I can do the same for the next generation.