Woman sitting in an armchair 1948

Picasso made this painting of a woman sitting in an armchair with oils on canvas, and you can tell he was really working at it. You can see how the painting came into being through trial and error, shifting and emerging through intuition. I sympathize with him! I can imagine him thinking hard, maybe even struggling with the image as he created it. The paint has a rich texture, and you see that the color and the surface shape our experience of the painting. Look at the gesture of the woman's hand - it communicates so much feeling. It reminds me that artists are in an ongoing conversation, exchanging ideas across time. Painting is such an embodied form of expression, embracing ambiguity. We can all interpret and create meaning, together.