Winter. Elgersburg 1906

Edvard Munch made this landscape, Winter, Elgersburg, with oil paint, and what a wintery feeling! The paint’s spread thinly, almost as if he was trying to capture a memory, not a place. The pale blues and greens, mixed with white, give an impression of cool air and snow-covered fields. You can almost feel the cold seeping into the scene, right? I can imagine Munch standing out there in the Elgersburg winter, squinting, trying to capture the essence of this bleak landscape. There’s something about the way the road curves and disappears, like an idea unfinished. The little dabs of color, here and there, suggest details— maybe frozen vegetation, or just the remnants of summer color peeking through? It reminds me of other landscape painters like Van Gogh or even Marsden Hartley, each trying to find their way of expressing how a place makes them feel, what it means to them. Painting is such a conversation across time, isn’t it?