Leerling van Schule Schloss Salem met koeien in een wei c. 1929

This is a photograph, made by an anonymous student at Schule Schloss Salem, and it shows cows in a field. What strikes me is the gentleness of it all. It’s almost as if the student, maybe missing home, wanted to capture a quiet moment of connection between the human and the animal worlds. I imagine the student carefully composing the shot, waiting for the light to be just right, and for the figures to align. The soft focus and muted tones give the whole scene a dreamlike quality. You can almost feel the cool, damp air of the field, the smell of grass and earth. It makes me think about how even simple subjects can hold so much beauty, and how the act of looking, of really seeing, can be a form of connection. And who knows, maybe one day someone will look at my paintings and feel a similar sense of wonder. It’s all a conversation, isn’t it? Artists responding to the world, and to each other, across time.