Self-Portrait 1908

This "Self-Portrait" was painted by Leon Wyczółkowski, we don't know exactly when, but he probably used oils on canvas. You can really see the way he’s built up the image with these quite loose, gestural marks. It feels like painting as a kind of searching, a process of trying to find the form within the paint itself. Looking closely, you'll notice how the texture varies across the canvas. In some areas, like around the background, the paint is applied in thick, almost sculptural strokes. Then in the face, the brushwork is more delicate. The color is earthy, warm, and muted, with these pops of yellow, but look closer into that darkness and there is a whole spectrum of blues and browns. See that sort of ghostly, unfinished area of brushstrokes at the bottom right? It’s like he's saying that a painting is never really finished, just abandoned at some point. It reminds me of the work of Lovis Corinth or Max Liebermann; that same intensity of looking and that willingness to leave the traces of the process visible in the final image. In the end, a painting is just a collection of marks, gestures, and colors that somehow come together to create an image, a feeling, an idea. It's always a bit of a miracle, really.