Black bear 1910

Here's that bear, painted by Niko Pirosmani. The thick black oil paint, roughly applied, makes the animal seem almost like a looming shadow, right? You can practically feel the weight of each brushstroke, the artist building up the form bit by bit. I wonder what Pirosmani was thinking as he daubed on those highlights, giving the bear a kind of ghostly presence against the muted sky. There’s such a rawness to it, a directness that bypasses all the fussy details. It’s as though he was trying to capture the very essence of ‘bearness’, you know? Like when I work in my studio, trying to pin down a feeling with just the right shade of blue. He wasn’t alone in this quest; think about Franz Marc's animals, or even cave paintings. Artists, always chasing that elusive thing—how to make something real from just pigment and guts.