Wheat and Wormwood 1922

Hilma af Klint made this watercolour, Wheat and Wormwood, by letting the paint do its thing, a kind of collaboration between artist and medium. Look at the way the red bleeds, not quite contained, almost like it's alive and breathing on the page. In the left form there is a dark, vertically oriented mark, is it a scar or an opening? The colors feel like emotions – a wash of vulnerability. The intuitive nature of the work feels akin to the surrealist Joan Miró, with his biomorphic shapes and dreamlike compositions. But where Miró has a playful wit, Hilma af Klint’s work feels deeply spiritual, a search for something beyond the surface of things. It’s in the ambiguity that the real power lies, inviting us to bring our own experiences and interpretations to the conversation.