The Louisiana Museum--one of my favorites, outside Copenhagen--focuses an annual exhibition on a painter. Many have been women, and many have made work that is not just timely but beautiful.

Is it old-hat to make classic and beautiful pictures? Certainly not with Mamma Andersson, a Swedish born-painter, who paints largely from black and white photos, and historical documents, much like Cecily Brown, another painter the Louisiana has featured. The images are often cinematic and like the best mysteries: we take a breath and wait for the next frame.

Because there was another student with the same name in her art school class, she was given the nickname "Mamma". Even as a young painter she did not shy away from this designation and kept it as her nom de guerre--she thinks of paintings as weapons. Yet they are stealth weapons-- disguised as treasures. Her landscapes and dolls are not threatening even though they often derive from crime scenes and woodcuts. The still lifes and genre scenes often appear Japanese inflected, but with a noir twist. She cites the Met Breuer Gerhard Richter as a recent influence. She loves the materiality of textiles but she's also interested in magic and wizards.

She often paints women, she says, because 'We don't always have it easy." I would love to be able to be sitting at this table, the coziest, least socially distant group imaginable, I can almost hear their conversation.

She's been exhibited internationally(in Aspen and at the Venice Biennale etc) but I did not know her work very well.

Since we can't yet get to Denmark, take a look at the beautiful catalog which has many more sublime images, and their two videos on her on their Louisiana Channel.

About a girl, 2005, Mamma Andersson