Buttermilk Falls 

Editor: Okay, so here we have "Buttermilk Falls" by Robert Lewis Reid. It’s an impressionistic painting, presumably oil, depicting…well, a waterfall. I find it surprisingly calming, even though there's all this implied movement. What jumps out at you when you look at this piece? Curator: Calming is a good word! For me, it's all about light. Reid has captured that fleeting moment, that shimmer on the water, the way the sun filters through the trees. The way those greens just sing. Notice how the brushstrokes themselves seem to mimic the flow, that constant flux of water over stone, its never static! Have you noticed any little secrets about how the colours work? Editor: I guess the colours…they aren't realistic, exactly? There are purples and blues in the rocks, and the water seems almost silver in places. Is that a common trick of impressionists? Curator: Precisely! It's about perception, about the *impression* of light and color rather than a photorealistic rendering. Reid wasn’t just copying what he saw, he was interpreting it, filtering it through his own sensibility and feeling the scene from within! He may have spent an entire morning feeling this way about it, but perhaps felt completely differently on a different morning! Almost abstract in moments isn't it. It transports me right there... Editor: It definitely feels like a specific moment, captured in time. It almost invites me to try and notice how water looks like right now too! Curator: Exactly! It encourages a new kind of seeing, it wants us to remember to see more acutely, more mindfully, more sensually, wherever we find ourselves next. I think that's wonderful. Editor: I will keep that in mind. Thank you for this moment of reflexion!