Flowers 1905

Odilon Redon made this painting, Flowers, sometime in his life, using pastels to create a dreamy bouquet against a pink backdrop. I imagine him carefully layering the colors, building up the forms of the flowers with soft, smudged strokes. There's a real tension between representation and abstraction here, isn't there? Are the flowers real or imagined? Redon’s work is so interesting because it invites us into his inner world. You see these bold choices in color. I mean, that blue vase pops, doesn't it? And the pink, it's not just a background, it's like a mood. I find this tension so compelling because it speaks to painting's ability to evoke emotions and ideas that are hard to put into words. We are all participating in this ongoing conversation, and that every mark, every color choice, is a response to what came before. Redon's flowers remind us of the beauty and strangeness of that conversation.