Landscape, New Mexico 1920

Marsden Hartley made this pastel drawing, Landscape, New Mexico, and what strikes me is how he’s building form with simple, almost blunt strokes. You can feel the chalky resistance of the pastel against the paper, like dragging your feet in sand. The colors are muted, earth tones with a surprising hint of blue that peeks through. It's like he's not just showing us the landscape but also the feeling of being in it – that dry, expansive heat. Notice the little mark that indicates the lonely tree on the middle ground, a simple triangle of blue and green that pulls the whole composition together. It’s about the artist’s direct, physical engagement with his materials, a kind of dance between control and chance, a search for the essence of a place. This reminds me of Cézanne’s watercolors, the way he built up landscapes with layers of transparent color. It’s a reminder that art isn’t just about what you see, but how you see it, and how you translate that into a language of marks and colors.