Tibet 1938

Nicholas Roerich's painting, Tibet, uses thin paint, but with a lot of body, it's like he's pushing the pigment around to see what it can do. The texture’s smooth, almost like a fresco, and the colours float in and out of each other. Look at that big cloud in the middle, how it bleeds from light grey to a shadow of violet, and how this contrasts with the bright, hard edge of the mountain tops. It’s like the painting is breathing. Roerich captures the weight of the mountains but also the lightness of the sky. What this makes me think about is the artist Agnes Martin, who also tried to capture a sensation that was at once material and ethereal. Both artists suggest art is as much about feeling and intuition, as it is about what we actually see.