Church in Unterach on the Attersee 1916

Gustav Klimt painted this church with oil on canvas using a pointillist technique. I see it now - it is a jigsaw of tiny colorful strokes that make up the landscape, a church, and its reflection in the water. I imagine Klimt standing by the Attersee lake, squinting at the sunlight reflecting off the water, trying to capture the shimmering surface with all its little flickering movements. What a task to set yourself! See how the reflections on the water are horizontal strokes, compared with the vertical strokes in the architecture? And the dots are amazing, they make everything shimmer - the trees, the buildings, the sky. He probably looked to the Impressionists, like Monet, for inspiration, and then added his own touch, his signature flair for pattern and decoration. It's like he's building the world from scratch, one tiny stroke at a time. Painting, like life, is a process, an exploration. Other painters would have captured the scene differently, but painting gives each artist a way of seeing and experiencing the world.