Good Morning Honey 

Curator: Looking at Tania Rivilis's oil painting, "Good Morning Honey," I'm struck by the almost palpable sense of intimacy. There's a rawness, a kind of vulnerable exposure, despite the sitter's relatively composed expression. What do you make of it? Editor: I notice immediately the thickness of the paint; it is applied with real physicality. It speaks to a conscious use of material, where the impasto itself contributes to the sense of immediacy you are talking about. The subject is certainly comfortable, if a little bit tense in their gesture of hand-holding, with the use of house wear, I feel transported into someone’s home or intimate space, far removed from formal constraints. Curator: Exactly! It’s like stepping into a private moment. There's such deliberate contrast at play here – the bold red of the robe clashing with the backdrop, which sort of dances between yellow and violet... What purpose might those textures serve in this private snapshot of an individual and the means of oil paints? Editor: Well, consider how oil paint, once a luxury, became increasingly accessible, and therefore more democratized, through mass production. Using such a wealth of medium also means more labor, and I wonder who Rivilis would be representing as it comes into their place to be used: the person painted or those who made its existence possible in factories, in refinement, in transport... How might Rivilis want to display the relationship between work and personhood? The bold and heavy lines might display more the labor that’s in there. Curator: An interesting perspective – layering, and the artifice of color, becomes an element itself in how it communicates to us a state of living in society, rather than any singular perspective. Perhaps it shows a life’s dynamism. As you say, the application certainly mirrors how the hand makes things, whether paint or labor. In seeing the world through this person, you have this quiet recognition – you’re seeing a little piece of yourself and all the life around us, as much as just one human in this scene. Editor: Precisely. This image operates through all of its material layers, the person at ease, and the active viewer. Curator: So next time someone whispers "Good Morning Honey", you might pause and think of Rivilis' vision—all those stories of industry meeting the unique heart in someone’s eyes as they face each other one on one. Editor: I'll be pondering all the invisible hands that made that "good morning" possible.