Landscape c. 1945

Ramon Gabriel made this little watercolor landscape, probably sometime in the mid-20th century. You can imagine the wet brush dancing across the page, pulling those watery blues and greens and yellows this way and that, conjuring a space more felt than seen. There’s a lot of ambiguity here, right? It could be anywhere. I bet Gabriel wasn’t trying to capture a specific place but was more interested in the act of painting, the flow of pigment and water and the push and pull of representation and abstraction. I mean, is that a palm tree on the left? Those blobs of color could be anything! Painting is a conversation, you know? Gabriel was probably looking at Cézanne, maybe some Matisse, definitely riffing on the idea of landscape as a field of color and light. He’s not trying to copy nature but to find his own voice through the medium of paint. Artists steal from each other all the time. We are all just trying to find our own voice by listening to others.