Landscape with a bridge and cows 1920

This painting of a landscape with a bridge and cows, by Tadeusz Makowski, has a palette that feels almost like it’s been pulled from the earth itself—lots of browns and greens, with dashes of red and blue that make it sing. You can almost feel Makowski working the paint, pushing it around, maybe wiping it away, and then coming back to build it up again. I imagine him out there, trying to capture the way the light hits those cows, how the bridge sort of hunches over the water. There’s something about the thickness of the paint that makes it feel like you could reach out and touch it. The brushstrokes, they’re not shy, you know? They're laid down with purpose, like each one is a little decision, a little feeling, made visible. The whole thing has this raw, honest quality, like he wasn’t trying to pretty things up, just showing them how he saw them. It makes me think about how we all see the world differently, and how painting is just one way of trying to share that vision.