The princess and the ragged ballad-singer. 1921

Margaret Evans Price made "The princess and the ragged ballad-singer" with what looks like ink and watercolour. It's all about these crisp lines and flat colours, which give it a cool, almost graphic feel. It's like she’s not trying to trick you into thinking this is real life, but instead inviting you into a made-up world. Look at that ballad-singer’s red tunic, almost screaming against the princess’s blue dress, like a painterly power chord. The colours don’t blend, they just exist alongside each other. The shapes in the princess's dress and the king's robes are like a series of building blocks, that bring an almost abstracted quality to the painting, in contrast to the expressionistic rendering of the minstrel's hair. Price's work reminds me a little of Paula Modersohn-Becker, who was also playing with flattened space and bold colours around the same time. I mean, art is just one big conversation, right? Nothing is ever truly finished, just constantly being re-imagined.