Promise 2022

Zoe Hawk's painting, "Promise," sets us in a clearing in the woods, where a group of girls in pink dresses play a mysterious game. I imagine the artist making this piece, layering the paint in a way that feels both deliberate and dreamy, creating a space that's both familiar and unsettling. The pink is so insistent, it feels like something out of a memory, slightly faded and off-kilter. The way the figures are arranged, almost in a circle, reminds me of childhood rituals, those games we played without quite understanding the rules. The artist might have been thinking about the complexity of girlhood, the strange mix of innocence and knowingness, and how these experiences shape who we become. I'm also reminded of Balthus, who also often depicted children in uncanny and psychologically charged scenarios. There's a conversation happening here, across time, about how we see and understand childhood. It’s this kind of exchange of ideas, the back-and-forth between artists, that keeps the whole thing alive.