Soul of the Storm 2021

Camilla d'Errico's 'Soul of the Storm’ uses this really cool palette of mostly grays, blacks, and whites, punctuated by vibrant, dripping colors, and you can really see the artist's hand in its making. There's a real sense of layering in the paint application, especially in the cloud, which hovers like a heavy thought above the figure. The figure herself is rendered in meticulous detail, but the real action, for me, is in the lower half of the painting. The ground transforms into a swirling vortex of rainbow hues, fluid, like the paint is still wet. It's hard to tell exactly what tools d'Errico used here, but there's a real sense of immediacy to the gesture. This approach feels a little like Yayoi Kusama’s obsessive mark-making, where repetition becomes a form of meditation, a way of grappling with internal states and maybe the awesome, terrible beauty of human emotion.