Personnage couché 1921

Georges Valmier made this painting, Personnage couché, with oil on canvas. Just look at those colours, that golden yellow sitting next to that salmon pink! I love how Valmier plays with geometric shapes to suggest a figure in repose. I can imagine him building up the painting slowly, maybe starting with a basic structure of triangles and rectangles, then layering on the colors, adjusting and refining until the composition hums. It’s like the painting has come into being through trial and error, shifting and emerging through intuition. Look at that red circle balanced precariously on top of a larger maroon circle. There’s a real sense of play here, a joy in the materiality of paint. You can feel the texture, the physicality of the medium. It’s like Valmier is inviting us to join him in a conversation about form and color. Painting for me is a form of embodied expression, and embraces ambiguity allowing for multiple readings. I wonder what we'll discover next?