The Path of forest 1928

Andre Derain made this painting, The Path of Forest, which measures 54 by 65 centimeters, with oil on canvas. The earthy, almost monochromatic palette invites us to consider mark-making as a process of layering and simplification. There's something about the materiality here that gets me, this sort of push and pull, I guess. In the foreground, you can see a build-up of ochre and sienna, applied with what looks like a really broad brush, creating this thick, tactile surface, especially towards the lower right. The textures in the paint feel lived-in, almost like the forest floor itself. Then look at how that contrasts with the trunks of the trees, those clean verticals in the middle-ground and the ethereal branches that reach to the sky at the left side of the painting. It almost feels like two separate realities co-existing, the grounded and the transcendent, or maybe it's just me projecting. This dialogue between material and ethereal reminds me a little of the work of Marsden Hartley, who had a similar sensitivity to nature. The way Derain builds a world from color alone feels like an open invitation, it's less about what you see and more about how you feel.