Blossoming tree 1907

Martiros Sarian painted this blossoming tree with watercolor. It's all about the gesture, right? The way the brush hits the paper, leaving these watery blooms and hard-edged shapes. It’s a real embrace of chance and process. There's such a beautiful tension here between the controlled and the accidental. See how the washes of color create depth, but also flatten the space? It’s like he's inviting us into a dreamscape, where forms are emerging and dissolving. Look at the way the blues and greens bleed into each other in the upper portion of the tree, the whole piece is this really delicate balance between abstraction and representation. Sarian reminds me a little of Emil Nolde, in the way he uses color to evoke emotion. But where Nolde is often intense and brooding, Sarian has this lightness, this sense of joy in the act of painting. It's a conversation between artists, a dance across time.