Lori 1953

Martiros Sarian made this landscape, Lori, with pencil on paper, and you can really sense the hand in this work. It's like he's feeling out the shapes, letting the pencil lead him. The texture here isn't about the paper itself, but the built-up lines creating a surface. Look at the way he renders the foliage in the foreground – these tight, scribbled lines, almost vibrating. It's fascinating how the density of these marks defines the forms. It's not quite realism, but it conveys the essence of the landscape, as if he's channeling the spirit of this location, the place he is looking at. Sarian reminds me a bit of Cezanne, especially in how he breaks down the landscape into these geometric forms. Both artists are interested in structures, rather than just painting pretty pictures; they're both interested in a deeper kind of seeing.