Still Life with Flowers 1905

Odilon Redon made this painting of flowers, probably in oil paint, some time around the turn of the century. What strikes me most is how he builds up the space around the flowers with so many other things. There are butterflies, and leaves, and bits of nothing. The materiality is so clear; you can almost smell the paint. I’m looking at a loose brushstroke of brown just behind a white flower that tells me so much about Redon’s hand. It's just a smudge, really, but it supports the flower, anchors it in space. It’s like a little secret, a whispered conversation between the artist and the painting. Redon reminds me of other artists like Guston, who made paintings that were both figurative and abstract, dissolving the boundary between inner and outer worlds. Like them, he invites us to see the world not as a fixed reality, but as a space of imagination and possibility.