Mont Sainte-Victoire 1903

Paul Cézanne made this watercolour of Mont Sainte-Victoire using lots of blue, yellow, and green. You can see the brushstrokes searching for form, with layers building up like memories. Imagine Cézanne standing there, squinting at the mountain, trying to capture not just what he saw, but how it felt. The washes of color are so light, almost like he's breathing the landscape onto the page. There is a sense of the landscape breathing, the way one form dissolves into another. A dialogue of the artist with what he is seeing that is in constant flux. The light and airy quality makes this an intimate depiction of the artist’s experience. Looking at this, I think of other artists like Agnes Martin, who also tried to capture a sense of place through color and light. We're all in conversation, you know, across time and space. We pick up where others leave off, building on their ideas, and pushing them further. Painting is a way of thinking out loud, and Cézanne is definitely saying something important here.