Nightingale the Robber 1910

Nicholas Roerich made Nightingale the Robber with paint, we think, and a big imagination, sometime in the last century. Look at how he works with the paint, it's thinnish, washy, almost like he's staining the canvas with these moody blues and greens. I always think artmaking is a process, it's not like you have the whole picture in your head, it's more like a back and forth, a conversation with the materials. Roerich’s surfaces are not at all about hiding the process, you can really see the hand of the artist in the way the colours blend and bleed together. Notice the little house-like structure perched on top of what looks like stilts, it’s so strange and improbable, and what's with all the skulls at the bottom? It's like a stage set for a dark fairytale. I mean, where else are you going to get such an awesome robber's pad? This piece reminds me a little of Hilma af Klint, with its blend of landscape and mystical symbolism. It's a reminder that art doesn't have to be one thing, it can be many things at once.