Amourette 2021

Mary Jane Ansell made this painting called 'Amourette' and it's wild how she mixed up realism and some other kind of dream world. I wonder if she was thinking about the old masters when she painted this. Like, was she trying to bring back that super smooth look but with a twist? Check out how she paints the face so real, but then there are these strange braids that look like they're choking the subject? And the way she throws in those ghostly white sculptures in the back, half there, half not, you know? It's like she’s playing with what's real and what's not. She's definitely having a conversation with all those artists from way back when, but she's also saying something new. It is pretty cool how paintings can talk to each other across time.