A Heavy Burden 2020

Kayla Mahaffey's painting, A Heavy Burden, captures a young boy laboring under a massive weight, rendered in a style that mixes realism with surreal, cartoonish elements. I imagine Mahaffey, brush in hand, layering these different styles, pushing and pulling at the image until it reveals its emotional core. The burden itself is rendered with a kind of grotesque beauty. The colors pop, but there’s an undercurrent of melancholy in the boy’s downturned face, in the weight of his cargo. The artist might have been thinking about childhood, about innocence, and the responsibilities thrust upon young shoulders. There's a fascinating conversation happening here, between figuration and abstraction, realism and fantasy. It reminds me of other painters, like Basquiat, who weren't afraid to mix high and low art, to use the raw energy of the street in their work. It speaks to how artists build on each other's legacies, finding new ways to express timeless themes, like the weight of the world, but through the eyes of a child.