Children and chickens in front of a landscape c. 1902

Paula Modersohn-Becker painted this mysterious, compelling picture of children and chickens with oil on canvas, at some point before her untimely death in 1907. The earthy palette she’s using and the way she’s applying the marks, feels really immediate. Like, this isn’t about perfection, it’s about process, feeling, and experience. The surface is alive with texture. The paint is thin in some areas, thick in others, giving the work a real physicality. Just look at the vertical marks describing the tree trunks: the way the colors are built up, dragged, and scraped back, it's almost as though she's carving into the surface of the canvas itself. There's a beautiful tension between the solidity of the forms and the fluidity of the paint. Modersohn-Becker was totally ahead of her time, maybe, in a way, like a German, proto-Feminist take on Van Gogh. What is clear is that she wasn’t afraid to break the rules, and that’s why her paintings still feel so fresh and relevant today. They invite us to see the world with new eyes, and to embrace the messy, imperfect beauty of life.