Girl with a Plate with a Folk Motif 1920

Alphonse Mucha made this, *Girl with a Plate with a Folk Motif,* using oil on canvas. You can see he’s really layering up the paint around the girl’s face, and especially in her hair. I wonder, was he going back and forth, trying to get her just right? I bet he was, and I feel for him, because that’s what it’s like painting! It looks like he wanted to soften the edges of her, to blend her into the background. He must have used a small brush to paint her face, and he really captured something in her expression. She looks thoughtful, maybe a little sad? The colors are beautiful, too: that creamy white of her dress against the blue-green background. He’s using those colors to create a dreamy, fairytale vibe. It's a kind of dance between the artist and the artwork, a back-and-forth exchange of marks and ideas, each one influencing the other. It reminds me that we're all, as painters, in this ongoing conversation, riffing off each other, trying new things, and pushing the boundaries of what painting can be.