Paradise, Paradise 1999

Corneille made this painting called *Paradise, Paradise* and the colours are like pure joy, aren't they? You can imagine him dancing up to the canvas, putting the colours on, laying down the landscape with bright blocks of paint. What does this mean to him, this paradise? There's a woman in the foreground looking right at you. I wonder, is that Corneille's face or somebody else’s? And, what about the figures reclining and standing by the tree? It feels almost dreamlike, like he's just made up a whole world, a place of reclining figures and bright, almost fauvist, colours. You know, it reminds me of Matisse, that same love of colour for the sake of colour. I wonder if Corneille ever thought about that connection, you know, how painters keep having the same conversations across time, inspiring each other with their mark making. He's definitely inviting us to linger, to lose ourselves in the dream of this image, and that’s pretty special, right?