Girl with a rose 1950

Paul Mathiopoulos's "Girl with a Rose" is painted with delicate pastel hues. The making of this artwork might have started with light, preliminary sketches to capture the girl's likeness, before delicately layering colours to build depth and texture. I can imagine Mathiopoulos carefully working on the subtle gradations of colour in the girl's skin and hair, trying to capture her youth. What I particularly like is how he uses the softness of pastels to create a dreamlike, ethereal quality, as if the girl is emerging from a distant memory. There's an intimacy in the way he renders the details of her expression, especially the light in her eyes. It reminds me of those society portraits by John Singer Sargent, but with a more humble quality. Mathiopoulos, like many artists, builds upon the work of those who came before, engaging in a dialogue across time and style, using colour and form to communicate feeling. Ultimately, painting is about embracing ambiguity and offering multiple ways of seeing.