Painted Ladies 2018

Rose Freymuth-Frazier made this painting, called *Painted Ladies*. With its baroque theatricality, it feels like a dream you might have after spending too long in the Louvre. I'm trying to imagine what the painter was thinking as she worked on this. Maybe she's thinking about the history of painting itself, riffing on reclining nudes by painters such as Titian, but giving it her own spin. The surface is so smooth, it is like glass. What does it mean to portray women as art objects and also as artists? She has created an atmosphere of surreal playfulness. Are the butterflies symbolic of transformation? The cards referring to luck and chance? The roses signifying beauty and love? I love how she has mashed up symbols from art history and her own personal iconography. Painting always involves conversation and call-and-response to the history of images, and I think this is what Freymuth-Frazier does so well.