Gaya 2020

Cricorps painted this full-length portrait called Gaya with oils, layering colors and shapes to create a kind of stained-glass effect. I imagine the canvas propped up in the studio, the painter stepping back, squinting, adding a line, a block of color, adjusting, layering. I can almost feel what it was like for Cricorps, figuring out the puzzle of her own vision, working out the face, the gesture, the feel of the summer outfit and the light all around. The painted dark outlines that define the figure do the work of lead in a stained-glass window but also give a comic book effect. How cool is that? There's a dialogue between the figure and background, flatness and depth, the figure emerging from these radiant fractured shards. It reminds me of Fairfield Porter or Alex Katz, who also painted figures in bright light. It’s a conversation, this painting thing, where one artist echoes and riffs off another, pushing the language forward, in their own voice. And each painting is always a question, not an answer.