Oze's death 1912

Nicholas Roerich made this painting of Oze’s death with oil on canvas. It’s all about how the wooden cabin's interior comes into being with brushstrokes, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. I sympathize with Roerich, imagining what it must have been like to create. The red hues build up the walls and the fire beneath the cauldron. The way that Roerich has built up a thick impasto creates an intimacy and intensity. It makes me think about texture and the physicality of the medium. Roerich’s treatment of the surface shapes our experience of the painting, adding emotional and intellectual resonance to the work. Artists are always in conversation, an ongoing exchange of ideas across time. We're constantly inspiring one another’s creativity! Painting, in particular, is a form of embodied expression that embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations, never fixed.