Peasant with red headscarf 1905

Filipp Malyavin painted this portrait of a peasant woman, maybe in the early 20th century, using oils to whip up this whirlwind of red. It's all about process, right? Look how the brushstrokes build up the texture. Thick and thin, juicy and dry, the paint creates its own kind of fever dream. The red isn’t just a color; it's a mood, a shout, a kind of raw energy. See how the red of her scarf almost bleeds into her face, connecting her inner world to the outer one. And the way she holds her hand to her face - it makes you wonder, what's she thinking? The rawness makes me think of Paula Modersohn-Becker and her portraits of rural German women around the turn of the century. There’s a similar truth-telling, a refusal to pretty things up. Ultimately, it’s the ambiguity that gets me. There's no one way to read it. And that’s the beauty of painting, isn’t it?