A street in Cairo 1921

Ivan Bilibin made 'A Street in Cairo' with watercolour. It’s all about letting the pigment do its thing, the way the colour pools and spreads in the buildings to create the light of the sun! Look closely, and you can see how the washes of colour are applied in layers, one after another. The texture of the paper underneath seems to have grabbed the pigment, creating a beautiful surface. See how the light bounces off the buildings? It’s like a dance of transparency and opacity. There's a lovely shadow at the bottom of the piece which leads the eye to the figures in the centre. Bilibin’s love of graphic design and illustration, makes me think of the work of someone like David Hockney, using line and wash. But with a different light and mood. Art is always a conversation, isn’t it? A back-and-forth across time and place.