Matrix - Family Album Series n.7 2005

Bracha Ettinger made this small painting, part of her 'Family Album' series, with layers of lilacs and violets. It feels like she built it up through repeated actions, adding then maybe subtracting, like a memory that shifts and changes over time. I imagine Ettinger, in her studio, returning to this canvas again and again. She works horizontally, building up the image in bands of blurred colour. See how the horizontal gestures pull our eyes from left to right. I wonder if that was intentional? Maybe Ettinger wanted to evoke the act of reading, moving our eyes across a page. The surface is alive with texture. It's almost like she's excavating something, revealing glimpses of other colours hidden beneath the surface. These works are a conversation—with herself, with other painters, and with us. Ettinger isn’t trying to tell us what to think or feel. It's an invitation to participate, to bring our own experiences to the act of looking.