La Rue du Soleil, Port Vendres 1926

Charles Rennie Mackintosh created this evocative watercolor, La Rue du Soleil, Port Vendres, with a remarkable eye for composition. I imagine him standing there, feeling the sun on his face, trying to capture the dance between the solid architecture and its liquid reflection. See how he's divided the space almost in two? The buildings sitting above this shimmering world below. It's a place of both solidity and ephemerality. The paint is thin, fluid, allowing the light to bounce off the surface, creating a sense of movement. The vertical lines of the reflections almost dissolve into one another, like a memory of the scene rather than a literal transcription. He's part of a continuum of artists who look, abstract and then translate. The conversation never ends.