The Painter
This jarring portrait presents a little girl, larger than life at over six feet tall. She is naked and eerily luminous with translucent flesh. Her hands are blue and red, covered with something that could easily be identified as blood. The upper part of the body is bluish while the rest is yellow to white; the face is even paler. The feet are not finished but broadly sketched. The girl seems angry as she stares petulantly toward the viewer. Her nudity gives her a barbarous air, and she has been sometimes described as "an evil force of destruction."
The striking portrait is based on a snapshot of Dumas' own daughter, Helena, who was finger painting on a hot summer day. By taking her entirely out of her original context, Dumas deceives the viewer and makes him/her look at her child in a very distinctive way. The artist herself, talking about this work, commented on the ambiguity of childhood with its cruelty and naiveté. A parallel can be drawn with Diane Arbus' famous photograph Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, NYC (1962). In it, the little boy also seems angry and threatening as he holds a grenade in his hand, yet he was merely growing impatient with the photographer and only wanted to return to his toys. This contrast between violence and innocence would mark much of Dumas' work.
The generalizing title of "The Painter" adds another layer to consider. The menacing little girl suddenly becomes a powerful force of creation. She becomes the artist, the source, and the genius. Dumas plays with the iconic, romantic representation of a painter with a bit of humor. At the same time, she pays homage to her daughter - a mother's source of everything from life and death, fear and glory, happiness and sadness. Dumas powerfully and emotionally paints love and motherhood through the image of an angry and fearful monster-like little girl. Helena has commented about this work that it is one of the best paintings her mother has ever done.
