Pilvet 1900-luvun alusta 1910 - 1912

Eero Järnefelt rendered this pastel drawing, “Pilvet”, sometime around the start of the 1900s. Look closely, and you can see how Järnefelt built up this image from an accumulation of marks and gestures, like dabs and scribbles. Artmaking is a process; you add something, step back, look, then add a little more. The texture is incredible, isn’t it? The way the pastel sits on the page creates this hazy, dreamlike atmosphere. See the blues massing in the lower right corner? Those denser marks, layered and overlapping, give the impression of a gathering storm, or maybe just the weight of moisture in the air. The pastel is opaque and powdery, giving a softness to the clouds. Järnefelt's contemporary, Whistler, also captured fleeting atmospheric conditions in his pictures. The beauty of art is that there is no one right answer. So, let the ambiguity sit, and feel the magic!