November Twilight 1908

Rose O’Neill made this dreamy landscape, called November Twilight, at an unknown date, probably with oil on canvas. I like to imagine O’Neill standing outside, perhaps on a hillside, rapidly capturing the fading light and the misty atmosphere, because the painting has this fleeting quality of trying to hold onto something that is about to disappear. Look at the touches of purplish paint dashed across the foreground, like the grass is shivering. What do you think she might have been thinking about as she made the painting? Her marks are full of air and light. There’s a real push-pull between realism and abstraction. It looks like she was very present and embodied in the process. In this way, she reminds me a little of Georgia O’Keefe, another artist who I admire a lot. Artists respond to their predecessors and to each other’s work. Paintings like this are part of an ongoing conversation, where meaning shifts over time. Let’s think of this artwork as a gesture that embraces ambiguity.