Venice 1925

James McBey gave us this watercolour 'Venice'. The whole scene is washed in this beautiful pale light, almost as if he's painted the air itself. Look closely and you can see how thinly the pigment has been applied, staining the paper rather than sitting on the surface. It's all about capturing a fleeting impression, a moment in time. I am drawn to the way McBey handles the reflections in the water, vertical strokes of diluted colour that mimic but don't copy the forms above. The way these lines stutter and break up reminds me of Cy Twombly, another artist who understood the power of the unfinished mark. What McBey and Twombly both understood is that art is not about perfect representation, it's about feeling, movement, and the poetry of imperfection.