My road (I) 1907

Curator: Looking at Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’s 1907 tempera and oil painting, "My Road (I)," I'm immediately struck by its almost dreamlike quality. Editor: The materiality is what grabs me. It looks like a landscape barely clinging to the canvas, these thinned oil paints nearly staining the surface. Curator: Right, and there's an intentional symbolic weight. Note the figures, seemingly dwarfed atop these earthworks; what are your first impressions? Editor: Scale is so manipulated, making the viewer consider the implications of the path we take through this rugged place; yet, it’s quite flat. What reads like depth is truly skillful paint handling. I find it intriguing to think about how he built this picture, layer by layer. Curator: Precisely. Layer by layer we approach symbolic peaks. I find that Ciurlionis uses light and color to depict emotional and spiritual states. Notice how the 'mountains' appear as pale beacons. They seem less physical formations, and more expressions of aspiration or transcendence, cultural and psychological. Editor: A beacon fabricated from thin layers of pigment. There’s this really lovely tension between what he’s attempting to convey—big spiritual themes—and the basic materiality of the paint and board that makes it manifest. Was he mixing his own tempera, do you know? Curator: It speaks to something fundamental about the human condition. And regarding his process: that the symbolist painters of the era pushed the possibilities of materiality also tells of cultural memory; in this case a symbolic need for individual freedom and self expression. The symbolism echoes even now. Editor: Indeed. By really examining his approach to materials, to the simple acts of applying these thinned layers, the symbolic weight only increases. Curator: Seeing it like that definitely encourages a deeper understanding of the work. Thank you. Editor: Likewise. I have new appreciation now.