Wintery landscape 1926

Friedrich Mook made this watercolor painting of a Wintery landscape sometime in his life. The washes of color, applied wet-on-wet, make me think about the nature of watercolor as a process, it’s all about surrender. The paint has a will of its own, blending and bleeding until it finds a stasis. Mook uses the medium's inherent translucency to create this moody sky, an evocative scene where the sun is hidden behind layers of cloud. He seems to be using a limited palette of muted blues, greens, and browns, which gives the painting a sense of harmony and calmness. The eye is drawn to the washes and puddles of blue and grey that indicate the path running through the landscape. It feels as though he is echoing the work of Emil Nolde, particularly in his more simplified and pared down later works, with the subtle emotional expressiveness of the painting speaking of a kinship across time. Ultimately, Mook's painting is not about the specifics of a particular place, but about the feeling of a winter's day.