Girl Mending 1901

Roderic O’Conor captured this image of a girl mending, maybe a tear in her dress, with oil on canvas. I imagine O’Conor, caught up in the act of painting, the brush alive in his hand, the colors responding to his every impulse. Did he layer the paint, building up the surface with each stroke, or did he work quickly, intuitively, capturing the essence of the moment with bold, gestural marks? The strokes of white that form the dress look like they were thrown at the canvas with force and passion. You see the influence of other painters here, the way the red background is applied, a nod to Gauguin perhaps. I like to think of artists having conversations through painting, through color and the gestural mark, with this painting, it is the start of a new conversation with us.