Gezicht op een molen op een heuvel before 1902

This little black and white image, titled "Gezicht op een molen op een heuvel," or "View of a mill on a hill," is by Th. u. O. Hofmeister. I imagine Hofmeister outside on a blustery day, squinting into the wind to capture this scene. There’s something about the way the landscape is rendered here that feels so…physical. I can almost feel the weight of the air, the dampness of the earth. It makes me wonder what Hofmeister was thinking about as they were making this, what kind of life they led. Were they thinking about other artists, other paintings? Probably! Artists are always in conversation with each other, across time and space. We’re all just borrowing and stealing and riffing off each other's ideas, trying to make something new and meaningful out of the chaos of the world. We are trying to grab an emotion and put it on a surface. The magic of painting is that there's no one "right" answer. It’s about embracing ambiguity, uncertainty, and trusting your instincts.