A Northern Silver Mine 1930

This is Franklin Carmichael’s ‘A Northern Silver Mine’, and it is, well, a mine! I can only imagine what it must have been like to stand where he stood, brush in hand, trying to capture the essence of this place. The way he lays down those greens – wow. It’s like he’s wrestling with the landscape, pushing and pulling the paint to make these hills alive. And those houses, so neatly arranged, like little blocks of civilization against the raw, wildness of nature. The paint is applied with such a directness that the scene almost feels like it's breathing. Carmichael’s work reminds me that painting is a conversation, not just with the subject but with every artist who ever picked up a brush. Each stroke is an echo, a response, a new question asked in the ongoing search for how to see, how to feel, how to be in this world.