Le Chenal de la Rochelle 1927

Paul Signac made this painting, Le Chenal de la Rochelle, by applying countless little dabs of paint. It's like he's building up a whole world with these tiny touches of color, mostly blues, greens and pinks. I can almost feel him, standing there, squinting at the scene, trying to capture the way the light hits the water and the sails. Look at how each little stroke is so deliberate, but together they create this shimmering, lively surface. It’s a bit like when I paint—you start with a basic idea, but the process itself takes over. It's like a conversation between you and the canvas. Signac was part of this whole movement called pointillism, and it's fascinating how they were all trying to figure out how to make color and light work in new ways. You can see him in conversation with painters like Seurat, and later on with someone like Matisse. Artists are always bouncing ideas off each other, across time. And for us, looking at the painting, it's never really fixed, or finished. It keeps changing as we look at it.