Indianlägret 1929

Nils Dardel painted this watercolor called ‘Indianlägret’ in 1922, and what strikes me is how the pale washes create this light, airy atmosphere. I find that Dardel makes no attempt to hide the process; everything is laid bare, like the painting is a sketch or an idea. Look at the way he uses green—it’s almost like he’s breathing life into the paper. Not with detail, but with the gesture of the brush, this sort of spontaneous creation. See that hut in the back, how the strokes of brown create the impression of thatch, but don’t actually describe it in any literal way? The marks are confident, playful, and loose. The trees and the figures are all rendered with the same kind of expressive shorthand. Dardel’s approach reminds me a bit of Henri Rousseau, in that his approach is naive, or perhaps, consciously childlike. He shows us that art isn’t always about perfection but about the joy of seeing and creating. It’s as if Dardel is winking at us, saying, “Hey, let’s not take this too seriously, okay?”