Tin Foil Flower (Painting) c. 1936

Florence Stevenson painted “Tin Foil Flower” and I’m immediately struck by the immediacy of the mark-making. The flower is built up of these really direct, almost childlike gestures, like she’s figuring out what a flower *is* as she goes along. And look at the black background against the pastels of the flower - it’s such a bold move! It makes the whole thing pop in a way that's both unsettling and totally charming. The paint is applied so thickly, you can almost feel the texture. It's like she's wrestling with the paint to get it just right. There’s this one spot, a daub of blue near the top, that’s like a tiny explosion of color, and it holds the whole composition together. It reminds me a little of Forrest Bess, who was also interested in these kind of raw, intuitive approaches to painting. It's a reminder that art is always a conversation, an exchange of ideas, across time and space.