Marquesan landscape with horses 1901

Paul Gauguin’s Marquesan landscape with horses feels like it came together intuitively, shifting with each layer, like a half-remembered dreamscape. I can imagine Gauguin standing before the canvas, squinting, mixing shades of lavender and gold. The process must have been about searching as much as seeing: finding a way to translate lush foliage into brushstrokes, dabs, and daubs of thick oil paint. This guy was working with a heavy impasto, feeling his way through color, capturing the vibrant, otherworldly essence of the landscape. Look how he renders the horses, they seem like apparitions. In his hands, they’re not just horses, but part of the pulsating rhythm of the Marquesas islands. Gauguin was in conversation with other painters, riffing off the Impressionists but pushing towards something wilder. It's clear he wanted to open a space of imaginative interpretation. Like all artists, Gauguin reminds us that uncertainty and ambiguity can be a source of creativity.