Self-Portrait with a Lotus

She holds a single pink lotus close to her cheek, the bloom the one note of naturalistic colour in the picture. The figure is built in loose charcoal line and grey wash, the drawing left frank and searching rather than polished.

Over it the artist lays flat blocks of yellow, orange and grey that cross the sheet like a grid, splitting the face into a lit golden half and a shadowed grey one. The pose is calm and almost devotional, a woman offering a flower, yet the sectioned colour scheme pulls it firmly into the present and keeps drawing and painting deliberately visible together.