Montagne en Haute Provence 1976

Charles Lapicque made this color print called Montagne en Haute Provence. It’s a landscape that breaks down into slabs of bright color and wiggly lines. I can imagine Lapicque, squinting into the Provencal light, trying to capture a sense of place by reducing it to its simplest forms. The jagged black lines that cut through the pink sky, the yellow hills – they're so direct, almost childlike. But there’s a real sophistication in how he balances the colors and shapes. Lapicque was a scientist as well as a painter. I wonder if that affected how he saw the world, how he broke it down into its component parts? Each mark is so confident, and the colors feel both arbitrary and completely right. It makes you think about how we perceive the world, how we construct our own versions of reality. It's a reminder that art, like science, is a process of exploration and discovery.