Issa and giant's head 1932

Nicholas Roerich made this painting with tempera, and just imagine him there in front of the canvas, conjuring this otherworldly scene. Roerich's landscape isn't exactly how we see things, right? The colors feel plucked from a dream, with mountains that morph from mauve to orange and a sky split between acid green and gold. Then, BAM, this massive skull looms in the foreground. A figure in yellow, like a beacon, journeys toward the violet peaks, head ringed by a perfect blue halo. I wonder what he was thinking when he laid down those strokes. Was he seeing something, or trying to invent it? Roerich, like many of us painters, gets to invent a new way of seeing, of believing. And the skull – what does it mean to paint death so close to life, in such a vibrant world? It's like he's saying, even in the face of the ultimate unknown, there's still a path forward. Painting is a conversation through time, about beauty and mortality, isn't it?