Chickens, France 1914

Karl Edvard Diriks made Chickens, France with oils, you can tell from the lusciously thick daubs of paint. It probably started with a quick impression on-site, a rapid seizing of light and form. I imagine Diriks going back to the studio, working the image up into a final form. The whole scene swims in a flurry of brushstrokes—the chickens a mosaic of white and brown, the haystacks rendered as molten gold. There’s a sense of light breaking, like the artist is trying to catch something fleeting. He probably worked at the canvas, layering, scraping, and building up the surface. It has that sense of discovery you find in impressionist paintings—the way a single stroke can suddenly bring a form into focus, or dissolve it back into abstraction. I’m reminded of other painters, like Pissarro and Cézanne, all working to pin down the ephemeral world. Ultimately, painting isn’t about answers; it’s about the questions we ask, and the endless conversations that carry on between artists, chickens, and haystacks across time.