Cloudy 1975

Veniamin Kremer made this little oil painting, called Cloudy, sometime in the twentieth century. The mark making is so loose, you can almost see Kremer's hand dancing across the canvas, trying to capture the feeling of being in a field on an overcast day. There's this wonderful tension between the green field in the foreground and the muted reds and browns of the buildings and trees in the background, making me think about how our eyes move through space. I'm drawn to the bare tree right in the middle, its dark branches reaching up like tangled thoughts. Each stroke feels like a decision, a little experiment in seeing what paint can do. Kremer reminds me a bit of Fairfield Porter, another painter who found beauty in the everyday. It's like they're both saying, "Hey, look closely, there's something amazing here."