Venice 1948

Enrico Prampolini, sometime in the mid-20th century, captured Venice with paint on… something. It's pretty amazing how paintings can do that, right? Like, the painting *happens*. In this one, there’s so much blue and orange and red, and the canal sort of swirls. It’s so physical, I imagine the paint maybe thick in some places and thin in others, like he was wiping it away as he worked. I wonder what Prampolini was thinking, standing there trying to pin down Venice, a place already so, so pinned down in paintings? What I get here, though, is a *feeling* for the place. Like he was trying to get at something more than just what it looked like. Maybe what it *felt* like? All painters are in conversation, you know? We're always looking at each other, like, "Oh, how did they DO that?" And then you take that, and you mess with it, and you try something else. It's all just one big, beautiful, messy conversation.