Landscape near Martigues 1908

Andre Derain conjured 'Landscape near Martigues' with oil on canvas, and the result is explosive. You can feel the brushstrokes, the kind of pressure Derain must have used to get the paint to behave like that! It's almost as if he attacked the canvas, but also caressed it. I can imagine Derain standing there, squinting at the scene, the light bouncing off the landscape. I wonder if he felt this intense urge to wrestle the colors onto the canvas, to try and capture that specific light, the feeling of the wind. Did he have to stop himself from mixing it all together into a muddy mess? The color palette, so vibrant and earthy, feels like he’s trying to compress the entire world into these blocks of pigment. Like he's saying: this is how I see it, take it or leave it! What a great challenge to set yourself. It reminds me, actually, of when I'm painting, how the most difficult thing is to embrace the mess, the not-knowing.