View over the rooftops. France 1926

Zinaida Serebriakova painted ‘View over the rooftops’ in France; I love how she fearlessly moves between representation and abstraction. Look at the patchwork of colors making up the rooftops! There’s a very material sense of seeing the world translated through paint. The brushstrokes are confident, economical, and juicy. The way she mixes the colors reminds me that painting is a process of layering and discovery. There is a sense of air and light, but also the physical stuff of the world. See the way she’s dabbed white and pale blue onto the cloud formations? They’re so immediate, and yet they give such depth. She reminds me a little of Fairfield Porter, in that she’s interested in the everyday, domestic landscape, but she's more playful. Art is a conversation, an ongoing experiment, and it’s never really finished, is it?