Mist 1917

Nicholas Roerich made this painting, ‘Mist’ with what looks like oil paint, and maybe a small brush, in an act of seeing and feeling. Roerich’s world feels a bit like my own studio, where marks become a way of thinking through color, surface, and gesture. The trees in this painting, for example – each one a different kind of dab, a slightly tilted smudge, a barely-there stroke. You can see him thinking about the way the light is falling, how the mist is softening the edges. I imagine Roerich walking in this landscape, feeling the damp air on his skin, and then trying to capture that feeling on the canvas. It's not about perfectly rendering a scene, but more about trying to grasp the essence of a moment, a fleeting sensation. And through the softness of his brushstrokes and quiet colors he shares with us an exchange of seeing and experiencing. Painters have been looking at the world and making marks on surfaces for millennia, each one building on what came before, each one in conversation with the others.