Spring 1913

Curator: Lawson's "Spring," painted in 1913, is pure, joyful optimism splashed across canvas. The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, is lucky to house such a vibrant landscape. What leaps out at you first? Editor: Sunshine, pure sunshine. It feels almost blinding, a riot of yellow-green. Curator: Precisely! Lawson has built a world of near-monochromatic vibrancy with these thickly applied strokes of paint, a very confident impasto. See how he uses subtle variations in tone to suggest depth and form, light reflecting off the water and new foliage? It feels like he’s trapped a specific moment, that exhilarating first bloom after a long winter. Editor: It does feel temporal, like light itself made visible. The formal structure seems secondary to capturing that transient experience. It's almost Fauvist in its expressive use of colour but far less agitated, very contemplative. Do you find his broken brushstrokes contribute to this? Curator: Absolutely, and with the hint of modernist influence in how those forms dissolve – especially along the pond's edge – he asks us to consider painting's role, too. Isn't art a sort of translation of the observed world through feeling? A distillation, if you will. Lawson has taken a relatively traditional landscape and made it pulse with something intensely modern. It doesn't strike you as overly representational, right? Editor: Not at all. In fact, the brushwork almost negates a totally representational interpretation. The materiality is so pronounced; we're keenly aware it is just paint. A window not onto the world, but into...paint itself, I dare say? Curator: Yes, exactly, the painting almost refers to itself! We are invited to acknowledge that very real sense of play with how paint can interpret lived life. It's hopeful; I think that’s the core feeling that resonates from the work. And spring carries that weight of possibility with it too. Editor: Spring definitely whispers that. Curator: Lawson allows those whispered possibilities to materialize through touch, brush stroke, and a colour selection that feels both bold and exquisitely controlled. Editor: I concur. It strikes one as a painting that makes the viewer see a lot, both outwards towards the view and inward as feeling. Curator: Yes, I do, too. That is very perceptively observed, a most spring-like impression in its generosity, don't you think?