Appetite

Land’s Escape

40 Land’s Escape After “Paysage” by Chaim Soutine Paysage twists a mountain of greenness in the middle of the canvas, a skimpy ochre vein snakes through turvy trees to a mad-hatted house and wind shambles the landscape writhing a sky’s lost perspective. Leaves ogle a wind’s vibrato—a maddening Mistral inquisitive blue torches an eye-flame gibbous and lengthening away like a cord screeching on a violin. Up the road, hunched on the side, a manlike-tree guards a stone house. Inside coolness breathes along the white-limed walls, red tiles windwhistle over the roof sometimes cooing, sometimes calling in mocking birds. The painter has turbaned the land out of four colors green, blue, ochre, and yellow, trunks and branches mixed into black— all caught in a swirl, giddy sky of a spooled-out kite the ground dizzy under the gazer’s feet. ...