Camouflaged Vessel in River c. 1917

John Marin made this watercolor, "Camouflaged Vessel in River," with a light touch, like a fleeting impression. He’s using a soft, muted palette – gentle blues, grays, pinks, and yellows – to create this hazy, dreamlike view. You can almost feel the damp air and hear the distant sounds of the city. I imagine Marin standing there, squinting at the scene, trying to capture not just what he sees but how it feels. The way he renders the buildings and boats with these broken, fragmented lines makes me think he's not interested in perfect representation but in something more like a sensation. It’s like he’s saying, "This is how the world hits me – in pieces, shimmering and shifting." That camouflage on the boat is interesting, right? It’s as if Marin is playing with visibility, obscuring the very thing he’s trying to depict. I think about artists like the Cubists who were breaking down forms and playing with perspective around the same time. There's a real conversation going on here, across time and between artists, about how we see and how we make sense of the world through painting.