Ciboure 1929

Paul Signac made this watercolor, titled Ciboure, with loose strokes that conjure up this French harbor. I love how the paint seems to float on the surface. Signac is all about capturing the light, and you can almost feel the sun reflecting off the water. He's not trying to give us every detail, but just enough to get a sense of the place. Looking at the way he's dabbed the paint, I imagine him standing there, squinting at the scene, trying to distill it down to its essence. Notice the way he scratched in the clouds; it makes me think of Van Gogh, another master of feeling. Signac, like the other Post-Impressionists, was in dialogue with his peers. He was part of a community, all trying to figure out how to capture the world in their own way. Painting is always an experiment. Signac's work shows how artists can capture a moment, a feeling, with just a few well-placed marks. It's this kind of freedom that makes painting such an exciting form of expression.