Gayané & Manouk the cat 2019

Cricorps made ‘Gayané & Manouk the cat’ with bold strokes of paint, full of feeling. I get the sense it has been made and remade, rubbed down, reworked, so the surface would carry a history of seeing. I feel for this artist, looking so intensely at their subject, trying to break it down into planes of color, the way Cezanne did when he painted mountains. What's it like to paint something that’s alive and looking back at you? You know, the painting process is like a conversation. The cat looks like it’s part of Gayané, maybe a kind of familiar, their two faces pushing against each other. The jagged lines create so much tension, while the pink of the sitter’s jumper radiates warmth. It reminds me a little of Alice Neel, who also painted those close to her with such brutal honesty. Artists are constantly in dialogue, looking to the past and future, taking inspiration from their peers and predecessors. And, like all good paintings, this one leaves plenty open to interpretation.