Sketch II for vitrage dyptich "Rex" 1904

Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis sketched this dreamlike scene, likely with pastels, during a short but intense career. I see Ciurlionis hunched over this thing, maybe in a fever dream. Marks build into each other—a king, some grass, a moon, a flower. Are they there? The surface is super worked. You can see him adding and subtracting—changing his mind, but leaving some of those traces to form the surface. The colours are chalky, soft. Greens, blues, reds, browns, yellows. It's a harmony but of a strange kind. I love how all painters are in conversation, all the time. Ciurlionis would have known the symbolists. You can also feel the influence of art nouveau. It’s like, we are where we are, and we try to invent from there, you know? Painting's like that. It's awkward and weird and you don't know where you are going. But you go anyway.