Bathers. Mont Sainte-Victoire in the Background 1902

Paul Cézanne made this watercolour of bathers, with Mont Sainte-Victoire in the distance, using blue and yellow washes that softly pool across the paper. Imagine Cézanne, outside, maybe battling the elements. He probably had to be quick, making marks, wiping them away, rethinking, and starting again. I wonder if he struggled with this piece? Maybe he wiped and scrubbed at the paper to get some of the pigment off. I can almost feel his hand moving quickly, trying to capture the light and the shifting relationship between the bathers and the mountain. Look at that squiggle of blue that suggests a tree. It’s kind of clumsy, but also perfect. Cézanne was obsessed with the relationship between form and colour, and you can really see him working through that here. Artists are always having conversations with each other, even across centuries, and so I feel like I’m in conversation with Cézanne when I make my own paintings.