Goat 1934

Arthur Dove made this watercolour called Goat, and it really nails that feeling of watching an animal become one with its landscape. There is something so charming in the way Dove describes the goat’s body with these free and gestural marks, and the way it blends right into the sweeping green hills around it. Look at the lower left leg, how it bleeds into the background, and you’ll see how Dove is working with the idea of camouflage, or maybe even metamorphosis. It’s like he's asking, where does the goat end, and the world begin? Think about the light blue around the horn. It's a very thin wash, like water, or sky. It makes the goat's horn seem like a cloud, or like an extension of something beyond the goat itself. This reminds me of Georgia O’Keeffe, another artist who found ways to make landscapes and bodies feel connected. Both of them are showing us that art can be a way of reimagining how we experience the world. It's not about what we see but about how we feel when we see it.