Landscape with Cows 1943

Milton Avery made this landscape with cows using pen on paper, and you can almost feel the energy of the drawing process, the looping lines sketching out the forms with playful freedom. I can imagine Avery outside with his sketchpad, quickly capturing the scene before him. Look at the mountains in the background, rendered with just a few simple strokes. The cows, too, are sketched with such immediacy. The pen hardly leaves the page, the shapes of the cows are rendered with a continuous, almost childlike line. It’s like he's trying to catch their essence, not just their appearance. This reminds me of other modernists who were trying to distill form to its bare essentials, like Matisse. But Avery's got his own thing going on here, a kind of joyful simplification. It’s all about capturing a feeling, a moment, a memory of seeing cows in a landscape. Artists are always learning from each other, borrowing and transforming ideas across time. Avery’s drawing invites us to see the world with fresh eyes, appreciating the beauty in simplicity and the joy of spontaneous expression.