Cape Split, Sea 1945

John Marin made this watercolor, Cape Split, Sea, sometime in the first half of the 20th century, and what strikes me is the way he captures a scene not with perfect detail, but with a fluid sense of process. The painting's surface is alive with washes of grey and blue, the colors bleeding into one another in a way that feels both intentional and spontaneous. Look at how the blue is more concentrated in the center of the rocks. There's a physicality to the medium, a sense of the water itself being evoked by the watery paint. It's not just a picture of the sea, it embodies the sea. Marin’s work reminds me a little of Arthur Dove, another American modernist who tried to capture the feeling of a place or sensation. But Marin's touch feels rougher, more immediate, a testament to art's capacity to embrace the provisional, the uncertain, and the multiple.