Mrs. Ethel Cushing 1909 - 1914

Howard Cushing made this painting, Mrs. Ethel Cushing, with oil on canvas. The colours in this painting are so soft, and the lines are so clean. It’s like the whole thing has been gently dusted with powdered sugar. The flatness of the surface is really interesting, too, which is probably helped by the fact that Cushing seems to have thinned his paint down to a whisper. I keep coming back to the way her robe pools on the checkered floor. It's a pale, hazy blue that somehow manages to be both grounded and ethereal at the same time. It's just a tiny little detail, but it totally makes the painting for me. Thinking about the formal, decorative element, it makes me think of other artists like James McNeill Whistler, who also loved to play with the relationships between colour and pattern. It’s a conversation that’s been going on in painting for centuries, and it's one that I'm always happy to eavesdrop on.