My road (III) 1907

Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis made this landscape of muted tones sometime before 1911. Looking at it, I wonder if Ciurlionis was trying to capture not just a place, but a feeling, too. There's a dreamlike quality to the brushstrokes, a softness that makes the whole scene feel like it's emerging from a haze. I imagine him, standing before the canvas, trying to translate something he couldn’t quite put into words. The paint is thin, almost transparent in places, which gives the image an ethereal quality. Those towers reaching up towards the sky are so evocative. You can feel the artist thinking about what they are trying to make, in relation to the history of painting. Each dab and stroke a step along the way, with one eye on the past and another toward the future. It's like they're having a conversation with all the painters who came before, and all the ones who will come after.