Vrouw met een waaier en een roos 1913 - 1914

This is Lodewijk Schelfhout’s “Vrouw met een waaier en een roos” at the Rijksmuseum, a monochrome work that has likely come into being gradually, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. I sympathize with the artist here, wondering what it might have been like to create this scene. Maybe they were thinking about Cubism, and were influenced by artists like Picasso. The way the figure's face is rendered using geometric facets is interesting; it reminds me of some paintings I have made where the use of lines and sharp tonal shifts communicate feeling and intention, and ultimately shape our experience of the painting. I imagine Schelfhout in an ongoing exchange of ideas with the painters around him, each inspiring the other's creativity. Painting is a form of embodied expression, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, and allowing for multiple interpretations.