Potato Picking 1940

Arnold Peter Weisz-Kubínčan made this expressive watercolour of potato pickers sometime before 1944. The yellow ochre and grey washes feel immediate, like he’s trying to capture a fleeting impression, or maybe the memory of one. I love how the marks are laid down, thin and transparent in some areas, thick and opaque in others. Look at the lower right corner, you can almost feel the pressure of the brush dragged across the paper, creating these horizontal lines. Then, your eye moves up to the figures and landscape in the distance and everything dissolves into these blurry, suggestive shapes. It reminds me that a painting is never really finished, it’s just a record of decisions made in the moment. It puts me in mind of Emil Nolde, another painter who used watercolour to create these emotionally charged landscapes and figures. Both artists show us that art isn't about perfect representation, it’s about feeling and seeing. And, how those two things can be totally intertwined.