Mirror 2017

This painting, Mirror, by Nick Alm, shows three figures emerging from a kind of silvery gloom. I can imagine him in his studio wrestling with this scene. Those arms and hands forming a chain across the canvas, each gesture catching the light. I see him building up the tones, layer by layer, slowly teasing out the forms from this subdued palette. You get the sense that this is a slow cooked type of painting. There is a tension in the image, isn’t there? The woman in the center stares right at us, almost like she’s daring us to look away, while the others gaze off, lost in their own thoughts. What’s interesting is the hair, this bright burst of color, that seems to have a life of its own. It makes you wonder if the artist has ever thought about the tradition of painting, and how he is in conversation with all the paintings that came before him. It’s like each brushstroke is echoing something from the past, but also pushing towards something new.