Echo Lake, Pennsylvania 1916

John Marin made this watercolor painting, Echo Lake, Pennsylvania, with soft, washy strokes of paint and charcoal. The painting seems to have emerged slowly, maybe with some false starts and intuitive adjustments along the way. I can almost feel Marin there, his feet planted on the earth, squinting at the scene. Was he searching for a way to capture the essence of the lake, or just trying to record a feeling? The strokes of green, purple, and ochre are so delicate. Look at the way the charcoal scratches along the edges of the forms. It’s like he’s trying to define the boundaries of the landscape, but also let it breathe. Those two dark splodges at the center are really intriguing, are they bushes? I love how he teases out the subtle variations in tone and texture. It reminds me of the way artists like Dove and Hartley were also grappling with the challenge of translating the American landscape into a modern idiom. I see these paintings as an ongoing conversation. They reveal the endless possibilities of painting, where meaning is always in flux, and the best we can do is embrace the ambiguity.