Tundra 1961

Carl Heidenreich made this watercolour on paper, called 'Tundra'. Look at those washy marks, pooling and bleeding into each other. There is green, brown, indigo, and beige. The painting seems to emerge from a process of letting go, and embracing chance. I can imagine the artist tilting the board, coaxing the pigments into unexpected combinations. What a privilege to witness this private, messy dance between artist, water, and paper. Heidenreich is playing with ideas of representation here. The splatters of dark blue at the bottom of the image could be pools of icy water. And the dark washes at the top suggest forbidding rocky outcrops. This painterly language feels so allied to the work of other watercolourists, like Turner, or even Helen Frankenthaler. They are all engaged in a similar quest: to capture the essence of a place through the elemental power of colour and gesture. Each of these artists teaches us that the act of painting is itself an embodied, emotional, and sensual act.