Untitled c. 1943

This little gouache painting on paper was made by Arthur Dove, and you can just feel him pushing paint around, right? I'm imagining Dove outside with his paper and gouache, mixing and remixing as he goes, trying to capture the light. It's like he's wrestling with the landscape, trying to make sense of what he sees. The colors are muted, earthy, and the brushstrokes are loose and gestural. Brown, yellow, and blue collide and collude in the center of the page. See how the paint is kind of thin and watery in places, but then thicker and more opaque in others? The materiality of the paint itself becomes part of the story. I particularly love the gesture of the yellow half-moon at the top of the frame – it feels so intuitive and free. Dove was part of a generation of early American modernists, like Georgia O'Keeffe and Marsden Hartley, who were all trying to find new ways of seeing and representing the world. When I look at this painting, I feel like I'm part of that conversation, too.