Nagarjuna, Conqueror of the Serpent 1925

Nicholas Roerich painted Nagarjuna, Conqueror of the Serpent, with what looks like tempera, probably sometime in the first half of the 20th century. It’s got this amazing, dreamlike quality; mountains and water in shades of purple and grey kind of dissolve into each other. I love how Roerich builds up the image with these simple, almost geometric shapes. The paint looks really thin, washy, like he's staining the canvas rather than covering it. And that snake, coiled around the central form, is like a golden thread connecting the earth to the heavens. Look at the way the pink clouds echo the form of the mountains below. It’s like Roerich is showing us how everything is connected, how the spiritual and the material are just different sides of the same coin. It reminds me of Hilma af Klint, another artist who was exploring these kinds of esoteric ideas through abstract forms. There’s something so open and ambiguous about this painting; it's a reminder that art is a journey, not a destination.