Fillette assise 1925

María Blanchard painted this seated girl with oil on canvas, a scene rendered in a somber palette of deep reds, blues, and muted yellows. I imagine Blanchard, brush in hand, circling the canvas, building up layers of color and form, finding her way through the quiet intensity of the scene. You can almost feel the weight of the girl's stillness, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond the picture plane. The thick, almost sculptural quality of the paint gives the scene a palpable presence. Look at the way the light catches the edges of her dress, or the way the shadows pool around her feet. There’s an awkwardness to the girl’s pose, which reminds me of some of Picasso’s figures. Both were working in Paris at the same time, so who knows, maybe they were in conversation with each other. Artists, we're all in it together, riffing on each other's ideas, pushing and pulling at the boundaries of what painting can be. Paintings offer so much room for ambiguity. And in that space, we find new ways of seeing, feeling, and understanding the world.