St. Johns, New Brunswick, Canada 1951

John Marin’s watercolor and graphite sketch, St. Johns, New Brunswick, Canada, presents a scene where the industrial and natural meet. The city emerges distantly on the right side of the page in a flurry of red marks, seemingly weighed down by the heaviness of a grey stone bridge on the left. Look at how Marin organizes space. He destabilizes traditional perspective. The sky is reduced to a mere horizontal band of blue, and the water flattens into abstract curves of blue-grey. Marin uses line not to define objects but to suggest movement. It's as if the city and its environment are in constant flux. This piece is less about representing a place and more about capturing a feeling. Marin uses his medium and his intuitive marks to convey a modern sense of dynamism. Through these formal choices, the artwork speaks to a broader modernist concern: the re-evaluation of perception in a rapidly changing world.