During the flashback at the end of Act 2 when real-life Maelle hides the canvas, Clea makes an ominous comment about what a clever hiding space she has found, and the characters are shown to be in like a black void with candles. I was very surprised that plot thread never came up again.
Maelle then enters the canvas right away. She's immediately noticed by her mother and send to be reborn as a baby. But how? Isn't Aline out of the canvas at this moment? isn't that how they were able to move and hide the canvas in the first place? What's the point of hiding the canvas is Aline can stay remotely connected? Can someone explain this to me?
(I'm talking about during the flashback, not when Maelle is later talking about hiding the canvas again to Renoir and he shoots her down)
From what we are shown and what is implied by the story, you only need the canvas physically to enter it, once you are inside you'll remain inside even if the canvas gets moved.
Otherwise Renoir could have just moved the canvas to get his wife out of it and spared himself decades worth of struggle.
Maelle and her sister apparently do a pretty shit job of hiding it though. Given how much slower time moves outside the canvas, the fact Aline re-enters the canvas for the final boss battle would imply she found it minutes (hours?) after being expelled from it (unless Clea helped her find it, but I don't think that'd make sense).
It should also be considered that in the Maelle ending she repaints everyone from her memories. Meaning that they aren't the same people and most of them likely have things made up, since she didn't know everything about them. Same as when she revived Lune and Sciel the first time, they're not the same people. Bias should also be considered, because Maelle is painting how she thinks they should be, just as Verso told her to. For example, she held Gustave to a high standard. So his new painted version could be more honest, smarter and kinder than he actually was. In reality, you can never know a persons full personality, because everyone hides their true selves.
Maelle's ending just cemented that the world was make believe, held up by her own standards of how people are.
IMO it's a bit unclear.
Painted Verso and his family are copies created from memories because they are based on people in the "real" world, over which Aline has no power.
The mechanics of how things work with people from the painted world aren't really explained (at least in the main story) . Skilled enough painters might just be able to ctrl + Z people back into existence within the canvas (with enough Chroma).
At the beginning of act 3, when Maelle and Verso escape from the real Renoir, she sees these 2 swirls of petals flying around, then she says "I can see them" and seemingly absorbs them into herself. I interpreted that as her seemingly being able to interact with the "essence" or "soul" of Lune and Sciel. It's also why she doesn't bring back Gustave alongside them.
That said, when she is trying to bring them back, Verso also advises her to "remember them" and mentions that painting is more about essence than verisimilitude.
So it's a bit unclear, memories do seem to play a role, but it's also implied there is a sort of "soul" (or essence, or data or whatever you want to call it) that's unique to each person in the painted world.