Untitled (Heavy Snowfall) c. 1939

Lena Gurr made this image, heavy with snowfall, using what looks like gouache or maybe tempera. Look how the surface has this lovely matte quality, like chalk. The image is built up of flat planes of colour – blues and whites for the snow, reds and greens for the buildings and the figure. The horses are kind of blocky but full of energy. I bet Lena was out there in the cold, quickly trying to capture the scene. The paint is thin, and it feels very direct, like she was trying to get it down fast. The light blue brushstrokes across the bottom really give a sense of the snow-covered ground. What I like about this is how she's seeing something real, a slice of life, and then making it into her own thing with these expressive, chunky marks. You can almost feel the cold and the quiet of a snowy day. It puts me in mind of other painters like Lois Dodd, who also found something special in everyday scenes. We're all just bouncing ideas off each other, right?