A landscape with a farm 1927

Constant Permeke painted this ‘Landscape with a Farm’ sometime in his life, and I'm immediately drawn to how he approached this scene. It’s as if the colours were chosen not just to represent the landscape, but to evoke a feeling, a sense of place that’s both familiar and slightly unsettling. The texture here is key. Permeke’s brushstrokes are thick, almost sculptural. You can practically feel the weight of the paint, especially in the way the clouds hover in the sky. It’s like he’s wrestling with the materiality of the medium, trying to pin down something elusive. Look at the tree, how the greens and browns blend together in this sort of earthy embrace. It feels like Permeke isn’t just painting a tree, but embodying its solidity and presence. Permeke reminds me of the German Expressionist, Emil Nolde, in his raw application of paint and his ability to convey emotion through colour. There is no fixed or definitive meaning here, and that’s precisely what makes it so captivating.