Mont Sainte-Victoire 1903

This is one of Paul Cézanne's paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire, done with watercolor, likely en plein air. I can really feel his process here. The washes of blue and green suggest a landscape filtered through feeling as much as sight. You can see the materiality of the work: thin layers of transparent color, pooling and blending on the paper. It’s almost like he's mapping the mountain's essence. Look closely at the way he’s dabbed at the trees in the foreground – little blots of green, yellow, and blue. Each mark is a decision, a tiny act of creation, right? It's like he's saying, "This is how I see, how I feel, how I make." I see echoes of Turner in Cézanne's dissolving forms and broken color, that same interest in capturing the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere. Art is just a conversation, everyone riffing off each other. It's not about getting it "right," but about staying open to the possibilities, the surprises, the beautiful mess of it all.