Oriental Garden 1939

Paul Klee painted this Oriental Garden with soft purples, blues and browns, creating a patchwork dreamscape. Just imagine Klee, lost in thought, meticulously layering each color block, building up the image from a simple grid to a more complex composition of architectural forms, little plants, and maybe even a staircase. The paint is applied thinly, allowing the texture of the paper to peek through, giving it this soft, ethereal quality. Look at that delicate black line suggesting a branch, almost like a calligraphic stroke. Klee was always in conversation with other artists like Kandinsky and the Bauhaus crew, but he had his own thing, a very playful, whimsical style. The way he embraced abstraction while still hinting at recognizable shapes reminds me a little of my own approach, trying to find the sweet spot between representation and pure form. It’s a reminder that painting is an ongoing dialogue, a way of seeing and feeling the world that keeps evolving. It's like we are all talking to each other across time.