Ivy in Flower 1941

Henri Matisse made "Ivy in Flower" with oil on canvas, and you can see how the whole thing has been built up, colour by colour, shape by shape. I can almost feel his touch in the layering of the ochre table top and how the shapes and colours are arranged on top of it. It makes me think of all those countless hours Matisse spent in his studio. What he must have been looking at? You know, how the light was hitting the ivy, the fruit, and the objects on the table? What he may have been thinking when he was trying to get all those sensations onto the canvas? He's in conversation with painters of the past, like Cézanne. But then he turns around and has a chat with the Fauves. Ultimately, what I find so deeply moving is that painting is a conversation across time, a way of thinking and feeling that transcends words, offering us a new way to see the world, or even to re-see it.