Landscape with Blooming Trees 1951

Max Gubler made this landscape with blooming trees using oil on canvas. The creamy white ground barely contains the composition: broad strokes of black, blue, yellow, and the odd peach tone, describe a tree, a field, and some very distant mountains. I imagine Max standing there, brush in hand, squinting at the world, trying to capture something fleeting. The paint is applied thickly, each stroke a deliberate act of translation. See how the blues create these luminous, blooming forms. Did he mix them himself or straight from the tube? There is something so direct about applying paint to canvas, isn’t there? The dark, almost crude, marks of the tree, almost like a barrier to entry. I wonder if Philip Guston ever saw this? Anyway, this painting is like a conversation, not just with the landscape, but with all the other paintings and painters who've tried to wrestle with the same questions. Painting’s about feeling and intention and not fixed meanings. It embraces uncertainty.