Star of Mother of the World 1924

Nicholas Roerich painted 'Star of Mother of the World' with oil on canvas, and look at the way he handles the paint! It's almost like he's caressing the canvas, isn't it? The colors here, those muted blues and greens, create such a tranquil, dreamlike atmosphere, yet when you look closely, it seems like a mirage. I'm drawn to the texture of the sky, it is striated and creates an unreal atmospheric effect. It's not blended, it's clearly dragged, so the surface maintains a certain roughness. It really makes you think about the painting process itself, about Roerich's hand moving across the canvas, slowly creating this ethereal landscape. Roerich was a theosophist, so perhaps he wants us to feel that our ideas of what a picture should be are unstable. It reminds me of Hilma af Klint, both artists are interested in spiritual ideas and using abstraction to reflect the unseen forces of the world. Anyway, isn’t it wonderful how paintings can be so open to interpretation? There's no single right answer, and that's what makes art so exciting.