Sct. Hjælper Klokkehus, Kliplev 1920

Agnes Slott-Møller made this watercolor, titled "Sct. Hjælper Klokkehus, Kliplev," around 1920. Look how the church building is built up from patches of translucent color, mostly greens and browns, laid down wet on the paper. It's like she's coaxing the image into being, letting the medium do its thing. I can imagine Agnes standing in the Danish countryside, squinting in the sunlight, trying to capture the essence of this old bell tower. What was she thinking as she mixed her paints, watching the colors bleed into each other? Did she feel a sense of connection to the past, to the generations who had worshipped in that church? There’s a looseness to the brushwork, a sense of immediacy, but also a deep understanding of form and structure. The textures in the painting make me feel like I'm looking at a Turner; but then the subject makes me feel like it's Pissarro. Think about how artists are in an ongoing conversation, exchanging ideas across time, inspiring one another. Painting's like that, an embodied expression embracing ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations and meaning over fixed readings.