Trees 1918

Maurice Prendergast made this watercolour painting, Trees. The blue seeps down the paper. The green and brown, smudged and blurring, evokes a canopy of leaves, all wet and sticky. What a dance of colour! I wonder what Prendergast was thinking as he dabbed these swathes of colour. How he built up the image, layer upon layer, until the trunks emerge from the page. The paint is thin, translucent, shimmering on the surface. The brown strokes, thick and expressive, communicate a sense of the artist's hand, his intention, his presence. Prendergast's painting calls to mind the work of other artists, like Bonnard, who captured fleeting moments of beauty with his loose brushstrokes and vibrant colours. These artists were in a constant conversation, inspiring each other, pushing the boundaries of what painting could be. Painting is an ongoing exchange of ideas, an embodied form of expression which embraces ambiguity and uncertainty.