Pop in zetel 1933

Léon Spilliaert painted this watercolour, Pop in Zetel, during the first world war. The palette of muted browns, greys and blues are like a quiet sigh. I wonder what it was like for Spilliaert to make this, back then? Perhaps he felt like I sometimes do when I'm in my studio: that making art is just messing around with stuff, hoping something good comes out of it. Look at the way he painted her hair, how the paint bleeds into the paper. He must have been thinking about Manet and the Impressionists, trying to capture that fleeting moment of light and shadow, but with his own sensibility. And then, the chair she's sitting on – it's so big and round and enveloping, as if she's being swallowed up by the furniture. It reminds me of my own paintings, where figures and objects are constantly merging and dissolving into each other. The whole thing has this ghostly, ephemeral quality, like a memory fading away.