Kathy With a Yellow Dress 1951

Henri Matisse painted ‘Kathy With a Yellow Dress’ in 1951, and those blues and yellows just sing, don’t they? It's like watching the painting come alive, shifting, emerging through trial, error, and intuition. You can almost feel him there, the way he applied the paint, sometimes thin and washy, other times thick and textured. Must have been thinking about the feel of the brush in his hand, the give-and-take between intention and accident. Just look at the black outline of her face – a single, confident stroke that still feels light. What a gesture! He just got it right. Matisse probably knew he was in conversation with other artists, with the whole history of painting. I'm thinking of Bonnard, maybe, or even some of the Fauves. Like Kathy, they all play with color and form in ways that feel both familiar and totally new. In the end, it’s an ongoing conversation of ideas and inspiration, isn’t it?