A big old pine tree of Kotavuori 1916

Pekka Halonen made this painting of a tree, probably outdoors in Finland. It’s a complex jumble of brown and red tree limbs. I can see Halonen trying to capture the tangled chaos of nature. The textures are fascinating; look at the way the paint is layered to give volume to the tree trunk. The paint is neither too thick nor too thin but has a consistency that feels just right. I imagine Halonen, braving the Finnish landscape, squinting at the subject, battling with the wind, trying to capture this chaos on canvas. It’s like he's wrestling with the reality of the scene, trying to give it order and meaning. You can almost feel the physicality of the brushstrokes, each one a deliberate mark in response to the wild beauty before him. I’m getting a strong sense of how artists are constantly in conversation with each other, across time. Halonen's pine reminds me of Courbet's forest scenes. We are all trying to capture the world.