Community 2013

Sharon Louden made this painting, Community, with acrylic on paper. It's got these really thick, juicy lines, almost cartoonish in their simplicity, all dancing across the canvas. I can just picture Sharon leaning over, maybe with a big brush, letting these shapes emerge, one leading to another. I can imagine the artist making the shapes and working out which colours will work best. Blue, red, yellow and black all meet and make this more than just an abstract painting. The way the lines intersect and overlap reminds me of those connection diagrams you see, and the title, Community, makes me think about how we're all linked in this messy, beautiful way. Like a conversation, each line responds to the one before, creating a kind of visual dialogue. It feels so intuitive and free, yet there's also this underlying structure. This work reminds me of other artist’s works that are playful with form, such as Terry Winters. In the end, painting is a form of embodied expression which embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations.