A Heavy Burden 2020

Kayla Mahaffey made this painting, A Heavy Burden, in the 20th Century, with the kind of cartoonish realism that I think invites you into a dream space. There’s an interesting mix of opaque and transparent color, flat areas and some nice gradients, a contrast that I find really engaging. The boy in the picture is literally carrying a heavy load, a big shell that’s strapped to his back like a turtle’s. But the image is anything but heavy. In fact, it’s buoyant with all these little cartoons and thought bubbles around him. I wonder what is the burden that he's carrying? It almost doesn’t matter. What matters is the way the painting looks, feels, and makes us think, and the way it seems to turn all those heavy questions into a colorful adventure. Mahaffey's work makes me think a little bit of Peter Saul, but also the way kids will just go wild and fill up a page with all kinds of crazy stuff. Art is like that, an ongoing conversation across generations, and the best art embraces the messiness of it all.