The Emperor 2020

Zoe Hawk’s painting ‘The Emperor’ is full of quiet symbolism, painted with a muted palette that feels both contemporary and lifted from the Renaissance. I wonder about the artist’s process, the layers of paint that must have gone into the boy's face to create that almost porcelain quality. The whole scene has a stillness that’s disrupted by the red pennants strung across the top, as if a solemn moment is about to be interrupted by a party! It makes me think about what painting is for, its ability to freeze a subject or an idea, so we can really look at it and pick it apart. I’m reminded of other painters like David Hockney and Alice Neel, who also captured their sitters in these hyper-real portraits that are also somehow revealing of an inner life. It’s like they’re all in conversation, across time. Ultimately, artists are always speaking to each other, building on what came before, and I think Hawk is part of this ongoing conversation, inviting us to consider what it means to be an artist, and what it means to be human.