Street with church in Kandern 1911

August Macke conjured up this scene of Kandern, likely with oils, building up layers to create a little village squeezing together and overlapping. I can imagine Macke working on this outside, trying to capture a sense of place in that moment. He must have been staring hard and thinking about how to fit everything in! The blues and purples make the place feel both shadowy and dreamlike. And those strokes of yellow and pink in the road--they almost dance. He layers the colours in such a way that you can see he’s thinking about the relationships between the buildings, the windows, the spire of the church, as if he were weaving it all together, bit by bit, making something that feels so immediate. It’s like a puzzle, or a song, finding the spirit of this place. So painters keep on looking, learning, and finding their own way to make marks, and hopefully, we learn a thing or two along with them.