The Barges Lighthouse 1904

"The Barges Lighthouse" by Maxime Maufra is a small oil painting, a swirl of greens and blues under a bruised purple sky. The paint is applied in choppy strokes, like the waves themselves, thick in some places, thin in others, building up a rough, tactile surface. I can imagine Maufra standing there, on the shore, trying to capture the wildness of the sea. He must have been wrestling with the wind and the light, trying to pin down something that's constantly moving and changing. Look at the way he's rendered the lighthouse, a dark, almost ghostly form in the distance. It's not a precise representation, but it conveys a feeling, a sense of foreboding, maybe? The rocks in the foreground are all built up with thick impasto paint, grounding the scene. Painters like Maufra, they’re all in conversation with each other, wrestling with similar problems, trying to find new ways to see and feel the world. And that’s what makes painting so exciting. It’s an ongoing experiment, a constant search for new forms of expression.