Indian Summer, Vermont 1922

Willard Metcalf made this big landscape painting of Vermont, called “Indian Summer,” sometime in his career. Look at the way he's dabbed all these tiny brushstrokes of complementary colors, blues and oranges, into a cohesive scene! It’s like he’s building up a whole world from these tiny gestures. I love the way the ochre fields and the russet bushes play against that bright, almost aggressively blue river. And notice how Metcalf builds the mountain up in the background with thick paint, making it feel so solid and present. The paint feels like a physical stand-in for the landscape, which is a reminder of the work it takes to build a picture. Metcalf's way of seeing and depicting nature makes me think a bit of Cezanne, who had that same commitment to the labor of seeing. Neither of them were interested in being slick, and it’s that raw quality that makes these paintings sing.