Bird Woman 1978

Eileen Agar built this curious composition from blocky shapes of blue, brown, green, and black. You get the feeling that the painting emerged slowly, maybe in fits and starts, as she groped her way through the layers of paint and form. I wonder what Agar was thinking when she laid down the first lines of this surrealist puzzle. Did she know what the figure would look like? Or was it only in the doing, the back and forth of applying flat color, that the bird woman took flight? You can almost feel the pressure of her hand as she maneuvered the brush to fill in the angular planes of color. There’s a birdlike profile nestled between the blocks of color. It reminds me of other surrealist painters like Leonora Carrington, who also created mystical and ambiguous forms. Painting is like a conversation between artists, across time and space, where ideas morph and transform with each new voice. And maybe that’s why I feel drawn to the process of painting itself – it is a way to embrace all the messy, unresolved feelings of being human.