Riders on the Beach 1902

Paul Gauguin made Riders on the Beach with oil on canvas, but we don’t know exactly when. You can feel the working of it in this picture. Look at how Gauguin builds the figures and the landscape with these visible, blocky marks. The pink sand is laid down in strokes of contrasting color and tone, like a mosaic. See how that same pink reappears on the other side of the painting, in the sky, in the reflection in the water? The texture of the paint is not super thick, but you can tell he’s dragging the brush across the canvas, letting the weave show through. And then he adds these darker outlines to define the shapes. It’s like he's building the image out of separate elements, but then tying it all together with that repeated color. Maybe that's what he was trying to do with his life too? Like, he was trying to leave everything behind and build something new, but you can’t ever really escape from your past. That's what art is anyway, an ongoing conversation, and the meanings are never fixed.