Sharugen Monastery 1932

Nicholas Roerich painted Sharugen Monastery in a world of simplified forms and intense color. The way he laid down the paint makes me think of the sheer physicality of his process: pushing color around the canvas, maybe scraping some of it back to reveal a ghostly under-layer. Roerich seems to have been captured by something beyond the mere appearance of the monastery, getting at some kind of felt experience, and an inner reality. I'm drawn to the way the walls and mountains dominate the scene. With that stark yellow sky, it's as if the whole landscape pulses with light. I imagine the artist, bundled up against the cold, trying to distill all this into something essential and true. Roerich's work reminds me that we're all part of an ongoing visual conversation. It's about seeing what others have seen, feeling what they felt, and then adding our own voice to the mix.