Boerderij langsheen de Gistelse Steenweg 1930

Léon Spilliaert made this watercolor painting of a farm along Gistelse Steenweg with what looks like a very dry brush or pen. You can see it in the barest marks making up the trees and the rooflines. I love how delicate, how tentative the whole thing feels. The colors are washed out, like memory, except for that insane haystack, which is pure, unadulterated yellow, so aggressively cheerful it's almost sarcastic. I wonder if that jolt of color is trying to wake us up, drag us out of the muted dream of the rest of the painting. The yellow is the key, it brings the whole thing together. Spilliaert really reminds me of Edward Hopper in the way he uses light and shadow to create a sense of loneliness and isolation. But where Hopper is all about clean lines and sharp edges, Spilliaert is much more blurry, undefined, suggestive. It's like he's inviting us to fill in the blanks, to imagine our own stories into the scene. Art's like that, right? An invitation, not a dictation.