Port De Cherbourg 1918

Henri Matisse made this painting of Port De Cherbourg with oil on board and it’s like he was wrestling with the scene right there on the surface. Look at the sky, all those greys and whites smushed together – you can almost feel him dabbing and pushing the paint around, trying to catch the light. Then there are the masts of the ships sticking up like exclamation marks, and the way the water is just a blur of reflections. I can imagine Matisse standing there, squinting at the harbor, trying to figure out how to translate what he saw onto that little board. It makes me think about what Fairfield Porter said about how painters must be “objective, dispassionate, detached, and willing to accept what is there before them, not what they think they know.” You’re always observing, deciding what stays, what goes, and how it all comes together. And that's what art-making is all about, right?