In the mountains. Switzerland 1914

Zinaida Serebriakova painted this landscape of Switzerland in watercolor, a medium that can be as unforgiving as it is beautiful. The way she's layered those washes of green and grey feels so immediate, like she was chasing the light as it moved across the mountains. You can almost feel the dampness in the air! Look at the lower right, those dark greens pulling forward to create depth. Serebriakova isn't trying to trick you into thinking this *is* a mountain, she's interested in making visible the process of how we see and interpret nature. It reminds me of some of Cezanne’s watercolors – that same dance between representation and abstraction, where the materiality of the paint is just as important as the image it creates. It’s like Serebriakova is saying, "Here’s a mountain, but here’s also how I see and feel it." And that's a conversation I'm always happy to eavesdrop on.