Untitled 1970

Luchita Hurtado made this painting with oil and maybe wax on canvas, and it's got this uncanny way of making you feel like you're both inside and outside at the same time. The way she’s built up the surface is really interesting: the colours, the textures, everything feels very physical, like you could touch it. It’s like she's trying to build this almost tactile space. Look at the row of rounded forms on the left, like toes or hills, each one casting a shadow. The sky is one colour, the land another, and there’s this kind of tension in the way they sit next to each other, pushing and pulling. There's a lunar orb in the sky, a perfect circle of white, that really draws you in. It’s like she's inviting us to consider the world from a different perspective, maybe a more internal one, by showing us that there is no single one. I think she's kindred spirit with Agnes Martin, or maybe Georgia O'Keefe.