Downtown New York c. 1925

John Marin made this watercolor of downtown New York, and you can see the wetness of the brushstrokes, like a rainy day blurring the buildings. There are dabs and dashes of grey, ochre, and brick red, creating a beautiful kind of controlled chaos. I can almost feel Marin wrestling with the image, trying to capture the dynamism of the city. I bet he was thinking about how to express the energy and movement he felt. See how the strokes create these angular, almost Cubist shapes? They give the sense of skyscrapers leaning in, as if about to collapse or explode. It’s like he’s trying to show not just what he sees, but how it feels to be in the middle of it all. This piece reminds me that painting is just a way of thinking through feeling, a conversation with the world, where nothing is ever really finished.