It is wintertime here; the trees are bare. But notice, without leaves the trees act as a kind of sheer curtain through which we look beyond to the cluster of white-ish houses with their roofs of orange-red and brown clay. And there is more, as beyond the houses, there are green and brown field-covered hills, and even a horizontal road, and then still another layer of trees at the top of the hill. Only then, finally, there is sky.
We tend to think of the winter as a dead time, but Pissarro has painted his winter landscape using a brush technique called impasto. Impasto is not smooth painting, but rather, thick paint is applied with shorter brush strokes in a somewhat rough fashion. Put worked this way, the paint strokes capture more light and possess an energy not seen on a smooth surface.
This isn't a dead winter landscape - the energy is in the ground. It's in the trees themselves waiting for spring. It's in the hill waiting to receive the seeds. It's in the houses where people live. It's in the dirt road which takes people from here to there. It's in the ever-changing sky. Do I see the planet this way - charged with the divine energies of potential and possibility? Or am I just walking by, head down, and maybe inside, all screwed up with what I'm calling problems.
