Alma Mater, Standing Child 1914 - 1915

Edvard Munch made this painting of a standing child, Alma Mater, with what looks like some pretty thinned out paint, maybe oils. It's got that see-through, watercolour kind of feeling. I’m trying to imagine Munch in the studio, squinting at the canvas, maybe unsure, adding some touches of bold pink on the cheeks or near the leg. It's all so immediate, so exposed. The colors are warm – yellows, greens, and reds that make the figure glow, but they are also transparent and fleeting like a memory. Look at the way he suggests the form with these loose, gestural marks. Each brushstroke feels like a decision, a little push and pull between what to reveal and what to leave unsaid. I’m thinking of other figurative painters, people like Paula Modersohn-Becker, or even some of Guston’s late work – that same directness, that kind of openness. Painters have always borrowed, stolen, and responded to one another, so it’s great to look at this work and imagine it in conversation with all the other paintings that ever existed!