Cutting the rice 1939

Romualdo Locatelli’s painting 'Cutting the rice' is a festival of ochres and golds with warm umber accents applied in loose, visible brushstrokes. Just looking at this canvas, you can feel the artist building the image right in front of your eyes! I can imagine Locatelli standing there, brush in hand, feeling the weight of the day, maybe trying to capture the light as it shifted across the rice field. He's got to move fast. You know, it’s a kind of performance—dodging in and out of the way of his own making. See how the texture of the paint mimics the density of the crops? And how the scumbled brushstrokes are like the wind rustling through the field? It’s a visceral, lived-in space, where you can almost smell the earth and feel the sun on your skin. Painters are always in conversation, borrowing and riffing off each other's ideas. And, when I look at this, I think about Van Gogh's fields and, of course, all the impressionists, who went outside to paint ‘en plein air’. It's the same desire to be present and work from life. It’s about capturing a moment, sure, but it’s also about how you can experience it, too.