Femme assise 1938

Joan Miró made this painting of a seated woman with oil on canvas, using a palette of earth tones, blues, red and white. The colours are quite flat, but the composition feels playful and the forms are so intriguing! I imagine Miró moving around the canvas, feeling his way through each shape and line. His approach feels intuitive, doesn't it? What was he thinking when he painted the woman’s body as a cloud of blue? He must have liked how the earthy browns contrasted with the blues. And those details, like the red dots, and the little sliver of red cutting across from the figure on the right – these are the gestures that make the painting sing. The painting has a shallow depth, but the shapes float in front of one another. Miró’s paintings have been really important to me as a painter, and I feel like he’s talking to me across time. These artists open up new ways of seeing and thinking. Painting is all about finding your own visual language, and that means staying open to possibilities.