The Stream (near Nice) 1919

Henri Matisse made this little oil painting, The Stream (near Nice), somewhere in the South of France. What really grabs me here is how he builds the landscape through these short, choppy strokes, a kind of shorthand for trees, fields, and sky. There's this juicy, almost casual feel to the brushwork, like he's just slapping the paint on, but look closer. See how the greens of the field vibrate against the yellows of the foliage? And how the dark shadows are just as important as the sunlit areas in defining the forms? Take the path as an example. It is constructed with the same marks and colours as the field, and yet it is distinct. It makes me think of Cezanne, who used similar techniques to create structure through colour. It’s a reminder that painting is always a conversation, a back-and-forth between what we see and how we feel. It doesn’t need to be a perfect picture of something to be meaningful. It only needs to create an opportunity to reflect.