Douro 1999

Julio Resende made this drawing, Douro, on paper with crayon. Look at the way Resende uses color. It's more like a suggestion than a description, right? The strokes of blue, green, and yellow aren’t just colors; they are marks, like notes in a visual song. The whole piece feels like a process, a journey through the landscape rather than a static view. See how the blue crayon almost scratches across the surface to form a body? The marks don't quite meet, leaving the figure open, porous, and somehow more alive. That’s the thing about art - it's not about perfection, but the beauty of imperfection, the raw energy of a fleeting moment captured in strokes. It puts me in mind of Joan Mitchell, in its abstraction of a landscape through gestural marks. Art is an ongoing conversation, and these artists offer different angles on the same themes, inviting us to see, feel, and think in new ways.