De vuurtoren 1910

Léon Spilliaert made this dreamy drawing of a lighthouse with pastel or crayon, and ink too maybe. It's got these big beams of yellow light that look like they’ve been scrubbed on, a rainbow, and a figure that looks like they are about to dive right in. I can imagine him, kind of hunched over, adding layer upon layer of color, almost like he’s feeling his way through the dark. There’s this real contrast between the solid, kind of rough texture of the lighthouse and the more ethereal, kind of floating figures and rainbows. It’s like he's trying to capture something that's both solid and fleeting, maybe a feeling or a memory. That lone dancer inside a rainbow circle feels so isolated, yet hopeful, like a beacon of light in the darkness. You see that figure, too, floating like a thought. It reminds me a little of Odilon Redon's symbolist drawings, but with a kind of raw, almost anxious energy. Artists are always pulling each other into these conversations, across time and space. It’s not a simple message, and I think that’s the point, right? Painting lets us live in those in-between spaces.