Stående figur 1909 - 1910

This watercolor by Edvard Munch shows a figure standing by a window. Look at the way those lines of dark pigment, almost black, have been laid down – the standing figure, the railings, the window frame all kind of bleed into one another. I can imagine Munch standing there, brush loaded, urgently trying to capture a feeling, a mood. What was he thinking? Was he capturing his sense of isolation and the strangeness of being a body in a space? See how he's used these vertical marks to evoke a sense of confinement, of being trapped? But then there is a splash of peach in the sky, a sense of the world outside. Munch’s practice was about expressing inner turmoil. The materiality of the paint, the way he applied it, all contribute to the emotional weight of the piece. It reminds me that making is as much a physical act as it is an intellectual one.