Territory 1957

This dream-like scene was painted by René Magritte, but when? Who knows? It's a place of the mind, right? It's pretty cool: a tree stands on a piece of land floating in the sky amongst the clouds. I wonder what Magritte was thinking. I bet he was sitting around looking at all those renaissance paintings of figures floating in the sky, and thought, hey, I want to paint that but with a tree and a bit of land! The colors are muted and dreamlike, there is something a little off about the painting and that is what grabs my attention. I can imagine him playing with the clouds and the landscape, almost as if he was arranging the elements of a collage, pushing things around until it felt just right. Artists always look at each other's work and swap ideas. Paintings are so open-ended and there is always more than one way to read them. What do you make of it?