Woman with red hat 1934

Picasso painted ‘Woman with a Red Hat’, using oil on canvas. The colours are muted and cool, except for that red hat, which is like a shout. I can imagine Picasso in his studio, circling the canvas, adding an eye here, a line there. The painting seems to come into being through a kind of struggle, shapes emerging and dissolving. It makes me think of a game of seeing and un-seeing. The different angles, the shifting perspectives - it's like he’s trying to capture the whole of her, all at once. Look at the brushstrokes on the figure’s face – pink, blue, white, all laid down next to each other to create form. I wonder if this was Picasso figuring out his own feelings. Maybe a conversation with Matisse? As painters, we are always talking to one another through our paintings. Each brushstroke is a thought, a feeling, a reaction to the world around us, so really it is ongoing.