Staande naakte vrouw wast zich in bad 1925

This monochromatic print by Pierre Bonnard shows a nude woman washing herself in a tub; it’s all hatching marks and concentrated blacks, the kind of thing you get through a printmaking process, maybe lithography? Looking at this, I imagine Bonnard hunched over a stone or plate, scratching out this scene. What was he thinking as he made it? Was he thinking about the weight of the body, the way it bends and folds? What about the sensuality of skin against cool enamel? The woman herself is lost in the moment of washing. Her hair is a dark mass, her face hidden. She’s all body, all feeling. I remember when I first started painting, I was so obsessed with getting it "right" that I lost sight of the joy of the process. But Bonnard reminds me that painting is about exploring, experimenting, and embracing the unexpected. It's about letting the hand lead the eye, and trusting that something beautiful will emerge. Bonnard makes marks, and those marks, in turn, make the painting. And then, if we’re lucky, the painting makes us.