Tahiti 1938

Henri Matisse made 'Tahiti' with crayon and charcoal and it feels like a moment captured on the go. I love the simplicity of this image. It's like Matisse is thinking: how few lines do I need to make a person, let alone two? There’s the yellow ochre and cerulean crayon, making the surface so alive behind the charcoal, which creates a wonderful tension with the black lines that form the figures. I wonder if he was thinking about motherhood and what a physical burden that is. The charcoal lines on the mother figure look like the cross-hatching you see on an old master drawing. Maybe Matisse was thinking about earlier images of mothers and children? It’s a tradition that goes back centuries. Painters never really work in isolation, you know? We’re all in conversation, and paintings are often just notes to each other, across time.