Portrait of a Woman Who Will Not Sit

The sitter is standing, and everything about the picture is arranged to tell you she has somewhere else to be: the weight is on one foot, the near hand is out of frame, and the head is turning. Tsukahara paints a turn as three pixels of the far cheek and it works, which is the whole argument for her practice. Ninety-six colours, most of them in the coat. At native size the face is about forty pixels tall and reads as a specific person, and the gallery has watched more than one visitor cross the room to check.