Profile of a Child (Profile of a Girl with Bird of Paradise) 1908

Odilon Redon made this pastel of a child, sometime in his lifetime, with pastels. Imagine the way his hand moved, lightly skimming the surface of the paper. It’s like the work came into being through error and intuition. I can see Redon experimenting with color and form, searching for something beyond the surface of things. What was he thinking when he put down that stroke of red next to the yellow? Did he want to bring out the bird or maybe disrupt the classical serenity of the child? The paint is thin, almost translucent, which gives the whole image a dreamy, ethereal quality. These butterflies make me think of other artists like William Blake, also making work at the edge of what’s knowable, who found inspiration in the unseen realms of imagination. Artists are always in conversation. They inspire one another’s creativity across time. Painting is like an embodied expression, always open to different points of view.