Meer aan de voet een berg Possibly 1948

Anton Labberton made this small watercolour work, Meer aan de voet een berg, sometime in the 20th century. There are a number of horizontal bands of colour here; a mountain, the sea, and the sky. I wonder what it was like for Labberton to make this, with a brush loaded with thinned pigment, applying it to paper. What do we see when we look at this painting? It's very open. It's like he is creating a space in which to just be, for him and for us. It reminds me of other painters like Lois Dodd, who just look and look until they find something that startles them. The lone tree on the right of the painting, how did that come to be? It’s an odd composition; it’s not trying to 'do' anything. He’s just looking. Maybe this painting is part of a conversation between painters, across time and space, about the sheer pleasure of looking and finding.