Lahaul 1932

Nicholas Roerich made Lahaul with paint, maybe oils, and a brush. Look at the way Roerich blocks in the mountains with big, simple shapes. It's like he's not trying to copy a photograph, but instead, trying to show us how mountains *feel*. You know? Monumental, distant, a little bit scary. I mean, I look at this, and I can almost feel the thin air and the cold. Maybe Roerich layered the paint, letting each layer dry before the next. That's how he got that sense of depth, that feeling of looking into the distance. Roerich went all in on the blues here - from almost black to the pale blue sky. It's like he's saying, 'This place, it's all about the blue.' He's not afraid to keep it simple. It reminds me of Marsden Hartley’s landscape paintings. Painters are always in conversation with each other, even across time. They see what someone else did, and they think, 'Yeah, but what if I tried this...?'