Don’t be afraid, boys 1921

Margaret Evans Price made this image with illustrative marks and muted earthy colors. Just imagine her standing at the easel, the way she would have gently coaxed the image into being, trying out the composition and color relationships. I feel for the sad kid here—what’s he so upset about? Maybe a little bit of homesickness, as the trees loom tall, their trunks like shadowy figures. The colors are so gently washed in—I think of Arthur Rackham and other illustrators of fairy tales, all those mysterious encounters. I wonder what Price was thinking about when she made this? Did she remember her own childhood? Like Philip Guston, the New York painter, she also painted in a fairy tale style when she started out, before finding new directions in abstraction. It goes to show you, we are all always in conversation with each other!