Man with donkey 1914

August Macke made this watercolour, Man with donkey, with a light touch, and a playful arrangement of colour. It seems to me to be about process and discovery: a patchwork of shades, marks and lines that shift between abstraction and figuration. I can see the quiet act of painting itself, the artist considering how each colour speaks to the next. I imagine Macke starting with the tree, the dark trunk anchoring the composition, before moving outwards, adding patches of red, green, blue. Look how he balances the cool blues with warm oranges and reds. He’s working fast, improvising, seeing what emerges through the act of doing. And look, the donkey appears, a dark shape taking form at the bottom of the painting. It reminds me of other early twentieth century artists, how they saw the world afresh, making up their own rules. Painting like this embraces uncertainty, it's open to new discoveries. There's no right way of seeing here, just a space for imagination.