Hope

Original title: Espoir

Vertical format. Figurative expression, a small Cubist-style town, with a domed chapel topped by a cross at centre-left, a building with square windows at bottom right, towers and leaning façades piling up. The planes tilt and overlap as in the work of the Cubists. The salmon pink of the sky, at top centre, opens a breathing space in the composition. The palette is cool and soft: turquoise, duck-egg blue, violet, mauve, with salmon pink as the only warm note. This pink works like a luminous clearing amid the blues. The register is more poetic and more tender than in other paintings. As for technique, crumpled papers mounted on the canvas are very visible on the right (pink and blue area) and in the central green, giving an effect of broken glass or crystal; the flat areas are smoother and more painted, with scumbling and transparencies; the black outlines are thick and irregular, almost like linocut, and give structure to the whole; the windows are handled as small light touches ringed with blues, which gives rhythm. One can see in it a Mediterranean town seen from above or in a dream: chapel, façades, stairways, rooftops. This painting shows that the artist can also tell a story, which widens her audience. The strengths of this painting are its legibility, its narrative charm, the blue-violet-pink harmony, and the balance between calm areas and worked areas.