Two girls seated in the birch forest 1905

Paula Modersohn-Becker made this painting of two girls nestled in the birch forest with oil on canvas. I imagine Paula working intuitively, scraping and layering ochre and raw umber; the painting emerges as a result of trial and error, the kind of layering you can only arrive at through that repetitive process. This painting seems to me so rooted in the material: the way the thick paint sits on the surface, becoming almost sculptural. The red accents pop against the earth tones, drawing our eye across the composition. I’m interested in the way Modersohn-Becker's work explores the human form with such vulnerability, as if she were in conversation with Cezanne, who also has a deep respect for the weight and volume of the human figure. Artists are always in conversation with one another across time, don’t you think?