The natural graces 1963

René Magritte made this oil on canvas, The Natural Graces, with precise, smooth brushwork. These strangely still, frozen birds emerge from leaves and, under a pink and blue sky, offer a kind of impossible naturalness. I can imagine Magritte, brush in hand, carefully blending color and form, trying to find the sweet spot between representation and something more bizarre. How could he make the leaves so realistic and the birds so surreal? It’s like he's asking, 'What if nature took a detour?' Magritte's way of seeing opens a crack in the ordinary. His paintings connect to a lineage of painters who looked closely, but then dreamed of something else. He makes me think of de Chirico, but with more green! I think, in the end, artists help each other play and experiment with ways of seeing, questioning, and reimagining the world around us.