Carrying Place Head (Casco Bay), Maine c. 1914

John Marin made this watercolor painting, Carrying Place Head (Casco Bay), Maine, with who knows what in mind. You can almost feel him just dabbing and swirling the watery paints, letting them mix and mingle on the page. Look at the rocks in the foreground, how they're not really "rocks" but more like suggestions of rocks, built up with these nervous, energetic marks. It's like Marin is trying to capture not just what he sees, but how he *feels* when he sees it. The paint is thin and transparent, letting the white of the paper peek through, giving the whole thing this airy, light-filled quality. Then you spot the dark, solid marks clustered at the bottom. Little black smudges that anchor the painting and give the eye a place to rest. Marin reminds me a bit of Arthur Dove in his effort to capture the feeling of a place, not just its likeness. Both were part of this moment of American modernism that was less about copying Europe and more about finding a visual language for the American experience. It is not one with all the answers, but art rarely is, is it?