Mother and child on the beach 1902

Picasso painted this ‘Mother and child on the beach’ with oil on canvas. It's a tender scene, rendered in a way that feels both monumental and vulnerable, you know? The paint is quite thin, almost translucent in places. There's a layering, a gentle build-up that allows the blues and greens to softly bleed into one another. The mother’s robe is so interesting. Look at those dark, curving lines, they remind me a little bit of Van Gogh, the way they seem to carve out the form and give it weight. It’s as if Picasso is using the paint to sculpt, to build a sense of protection around the figures. The red flower at the center of the image feels so fragile, such a tiny spark of hope. Thinking about mother and child images, I think of Paula Modersohn-Becker, another artist who explored motherhood with so much honesty and depth, but with different kinds of colours. This is what painting does, it’s not about answers, it’s an ongoing conversation.