Mary Magdalene 1964

Frank Mason painted this Mary Magdalene with what looks like oil paint, but almost as if he was using watercolors. The paint is so thin, it creates a blurry, dreamlike quality. Look closely and you can see how the red robe almost bleeds into the figure's skin, making her feel vulnerable and exposed. Then there is the way the dark hair fades into the background, obscuring the boundary between her body and the space she inhabits. I think that ambiguity is what makes this painting so compelling. It reminds me a bit of Gerhard Richter's blurred portraits, where the subject seems to be both present and absent, real and imagined, all at once. It's this kind of tension that keeps me coming back to painting, this idea that the most interesting art often lives in the in-between spaces.