Peony 2020

Allison Reimold made this piece, ‘Peony’, using coloured pencils, at some point in the 20th century. It’s so precise, the kind of drawing where you can tell that the artist is interested in artmaking as a process of rendering and refinement. The drawing is so smooth, almost like skin in the way the tones blend into each other. What really gets me is how the red of the flowers contrasts with the grayscale face and hair. The redness is so saturated, almost artificial, and the forms of the flowers themselves are so rounded and full, contrasting with the smoothness of the face. It reminds me a little bit of Frida Kahlo, not so much in style or subject matter, but in how Reimold seems to be trying to construct a particular way of seeing womanhood, drawing out a visual dialogue around beauty. Art is an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas, after all, and always open to interpretation.