Ararat 1958

Martiros Sarian painted this landscape, Ararat, with oils on canvas, and you can almost feel him dabbing at the canvas with his brush. The painting has an airy quality to it, with these sweeping gestures of yellow, blue, and soft orange creating a dreamlike scene. I wonder what was going through Sarian’s head as he painted this—maybe trying to capture the feeling of seeing such a majestic mountain from afar. The paint isn't too thick, but you can still see the marks of the brush, like he was trying to build up the image bit by bit. Those soft, blended colors give the mountain a hazy, almost ethereal presence. It reminds me a little of some of Cezanne's landscapes, where the colors and shapes blend into each other. Painting is like this ongoing conversation, right? Artists riffing off each other across time, taking ideas and making them their own. And that’s what makes it so fun—it’s never really done, always evolving, and always open to new ways of seeing.