At the End of the Way 1995

Ilse D'Hollander made this painting, At the End of the Way, with oil on canvas, but the exact date isn't known. There's something so thoughtful about the way she's built up these layers of color. It’s all about the process, right? I’m drawn to how the strokes create this almost X-shaped composition over rectangular colour blocks. Look at the lower left, that pale pink rectangle has such a tactile quality. It makes you want to reach out and feel it, the paint looks thin in places, almost like a stain, and thicker elsewhere. And the expressive marks that cross over it, it feels as though D’Hollander is leaving traces of her process visible. There's a real conversation happening between all these forms, each area relating to the others, and I am reminded of Forrest Bess. The way he embraced ambiguity resonates with D’Hollander's work. These paintings invite us to embrace the unknown, to find beauty in the unresolved.