The Fairytale Forest 1901

Edvard Munch painted 'The Fairytale Forest' with oil on canvas, and look at how he’s built the image from these loose, gestural marks. It’s all about the process, you can see how the painting happened. The paint is thin, washy, like a memory blurring at the edges. Look at the trees, those spiky, almost cartoonish forms. They’re not really trees, they’re more like stand-ins for the idea of a forest. Then there are the children, all holding hands, walking away from us, further into the scene. I'm really drawn to the way the path guides the children forward, maybe towards an adventure, maybe towards the unknown. Munch is always playing with these emotional landscapes, just like in his later work, 'The Scream'. You can see the same kind of anxiety and intensity, but here it’s softened by the naivety of the children and the fairytale setting. It reminds me a little of Paula Modersohn-Becker, with that same kind of raw, expressive energy and the focus on inner experience. Art is a conversation, right?