White cloud 1922

Nicholas Roerich made this painting, White Cloud, with what looks like thin paint, maybe tempera or gouache, and a clear sense of artmaking as a process of building up simple marks. The painting has this wonderful, almost naive quality, as if Roerich was less interested in rendering a scene and more in capturing a feeling. The texture is smooth, the colors muted – blues, grays, whites – creating a sense of calm and distance. There's a particular stroke of turquoise that cuts across the middle of the painting; it’s like a horizon line but also like a slash, a break in the clouds. Thinking about other artists, Agnes Martin comes to mind with her subtle color and horizontal lines. But where Martin is all about the grid, Roerich is looser, more intuitive. In the end, it's up to us to find our own meaning, to let the painting speak to our own experiences and emotions.