Mill on the River 1906

Cézanne made this little painting, Mill on the River, with oil on canvas—probably sitting outside, trying to wrangle the world into some kind of order. Look at how he's built up the scene with these chunky, deliberate strokes. Blues, greens, and touches of ochre kind of vibrate on the canvas. I imagine him squinting, brush in hand, layering those colors to make the trees and buildings emerge. There’s this one, almost hesitant stroke of white that defines the edge of the building – it feels like he's feeling his way through the scene. You can almost sense him thinking about how to make it cohere, like he’s holding a conversation with Poussin, or Corot, asking them, "How do you do this?" And that’s what painters do, you know? We're all just talking to each other across time, trying to figure out this crazy medium together. Each brushstroke is a question and an answer all at once, a way of making sense of the world, one dab of paint at a time.