Winterlandschaft 1910

Cuno Amiet made this small but mighty landscape painting in oil paint, and it’s all about these rhythmic brushstrokes. I can imagine Amiet layering on the paint, one stroke at a time, building up the hills and the sky with all these little touches of colour. What was he thinking, I wonder, as he daubed that orange against the violet? Did he know it would make the painting sing? The paint is laid on pretty thick, and you can almost feel the cold air and the stillness of the landscape in winter. Those horizontal strokes, they’re like the wind, whipping across the land. It reminds me of other painters wrestling with the landscape, like Van Gogh or even Munch. We are all in conversation, you know, all trying to find a way to capture the world, one brushstroke at a time. Each artist trying to capture the world in their own way, using the language of paint to express something deeply personal, something that words just can't quite reach.