Spruce 1914

Zinaida Serebriakova captured this Spruce scene with what looks like watercolor, where the translucent washes pool and blend on the paper. You can see it coming into being, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. I can almost feel the artist's hand, delicately coaxing the pigments across the surface, building up layers of color to evoke the feeling of standing in the cool shade of these old trees. The paint is thin, allowing the whiteness of the paper to shine through, creating a luminous effect. I love the way she suggests the forms of the mountains in the background with just a few strokes, barely there against the sky. It's like she's inviting us to fill in the blanks, to complete the scene with our own imagination. I wonder if Georgia O'Keeffe ever saw this, she did similar things. Artists are always in conversation, sharing ideas and inspiring each other across time. Painting embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations and meaning over fixed or definitive readings.