Rocks and Sea 1919

Edward Hopper made "Rocks and Sea" with oil on wood. It’s like he's right there on the shoreline, squinting in the sun, trying to capture the craggy rocks against the vastness of the sea. There are bold strokes and dabs of colour. The paint is applied so thickly it almost feels like you could reach out and touch those rocks. I can see the blue of the water reflected in the shadows, mixing with greens and browns. He creates a sort of push and pull in the way the sea meets the land; not in a smooth way, but a jagged, uneven, kind of halting way. Hopper must have been in conversation with a whole tradition of landscape painting. Maybe he was thinking about artists like Courbet, who also got down and dirty with the materiality of paint. Artists are always in conversation, even across time, riffing off each other's ideas and pushing things forward. And this, my friend, is how new ways of seeing and feeling emerge.