Turkestan [Mountain Silence] 1937

Nicholas Roerich made this painting of the Turkestan mountains with thin paint, maybe tempera, in blue, brown, and white hues. I can imagine Roerich making this in the mountains. He probably woke up before dawn to capture the light and the stillness of the landscape. He wanted to create a painting that almost disappears, like a mirage. The blue mountains fade into the horizon. They’re barely there, like ghosts. The way the paint is applied is so delicate, almost like a watercolor. The mountains seem to breathe, the air is thin, and the silence is palpable. I feel like I’m standing there with him, taking it all in. Like Agnes Martin, Roerich sees the poetic potential of the grid by structuring his compositions horizontally. There is beauty in simplicity. We can learn so much from each other, as artists, and our conversations with art should be ongoing. Painting, at its best, reveals itself slowly. It refuses to be pinned down. We can be moved by the ambiguity, but in the end, it is up to us to bring our own experiences to the work.