Le Cheval de Carrousel 1923

Constant Permeke must have used oil paint when he made ‘Le Cheval de Carrousel’, and with a dark palette! You can almost feel the thickness of the paint and the way each stroke builds up, defining the form of that carousel horse. The paint looks like it's been layered on, scraped back, and layered again—an ongoing battle of making and unmaking. I can imagine Permeke wrestling with this image, trying to capture the weight and stillness of the horse amid the imagined motion of the fairground. I love how the subdued colors give the scene a kind of melancholy. It's like the horse is waiting, stuck in this endless loop, going nowhere. The way the light catches on the edges of the horse, it gives the whole piece a ghostly feel. It reminds me of those early modernist paintings. There's a conversation going on, artists responding to and building upon each other's work across time. We never paint in isolation; we're all part of this ongoing visual exchange.