Extensive landscape – Nowe Miasto 1935

This landscape, Extensive Landscape – Nowe Miasto, by Zygmunt Waliszewski, probably made with ink or maybe diluted paint, pulls you in with its muted palette of grays and browns. I can almost see Waliszewski standing there, brush in hand, quickly capturing the essence of this scene. It's all about the gesture here – see how the brushstrokes create the volume of the trees, the undulation of the hills? It's not about perfect representation, but more about feeling the landscape. The way he’s built up the layers of tone is really lovely and reminds me of some of the tonalist painters in the US. There's a real sense of immediacy, like he’s trying to bottle a particular moment in time. The eye travels toward the horizon as the brushwork becomes more suggestive and sparse. Artists are always in dialogue with each other, across time and space, so I imagine Waliszewski would have been a great conversationalist! Painting is just that, really – a conversation between the artist, the medium, and the world around them, open to endless possibilities.