Pastorale 1954

Ernst Wilhelm Nay made this painting titled ‘Pastorale’ with paint, sometime in the mid 20th century, and you can just tell that the guy knows how to move some paint around a canvas! Nay applies the paint quite thinly, but he isn’t shy with colour! There’s a riot of red, yellow, blue, and green here, all jumbled together, like a bunch of confetti thrown in the air. These shapes aren't quite anything you can name, but they suggest things: a square, a triangle, a blob. It is all very playful. My eye keeps getting drawn to the upper left quadrant, where you see a chain of brown circles. They're like links in a chain, or maybe some musical notation, but then look closer, and each circle is smudged and imperfect, like the artist just went for it, you know? I'm reminded a little of Joan Miro, another painter who wasn't afraid to let loose and have some fun with abstraction. Ultimately, it's about the process, not trying to make something specific.