Waking eyes 2022

Curator: Zoe Hawk's oil painting, "Waking Eyes" created in 2022, pulls the viewer into an odd sort of dreamscape. What do you see at first glance? Editor: A silent film melodrama! Or maybe a still from an art-house horror movie? It’s undeniably unsettling, the palette all sugary and sharp. Like candy laced with something metallic. Curator: The unsettling atmosphere is very intentional, indeed. It presents an intriguing intersection of art and craft as Hawk’s labor-intensive painting utilizes oil paint, a classically esteemed material, in a style that many might categorize as "naive art." These choices create inherent tensions. Editor: Naive, but definitely knowing. Look at the almost clinical rendering of those figures – their faces are blank slates, and yet you sense so much repressed emotion churning beneath the surface. Curator: The composition reinforces that sense. The wallpaper pattern, the bed canopy – it all feels incredibly constructed. It brings up notions of set design and costuming, emphasizing artifice. I also see it hinting at the constraints placed on women, within the social roles they play, for the expectations around performance. Editor: And the dresses! That scarlet dress being offered to, or maybe rejected by, the figure in the white slip... it’s so fraught! Is it about choice, restriction, or the societal roles we are forced into? The figures occupy a dollhouse of predetermined identities. Each trapped within their own color. Curator: Exactly! And the materials, consider them as embodiments of both the promise and the restrictions within the lives of these women. Editor: I see a reflection on manufactured ideals. All the vibrant, unnatural colors suggest this isn't reality so much as a distorted memory or perhaps a constructed nightmare. It all makes one reconsider the act of “waking eyes”. To truly see beyond illusions and predetermined roles. Curator: It certainly does. This painting, with its peculiar beauty and underlying anxiety, presents a fertile ground for contemplation on production, material, labor, and their profound influence. Editor: Yes, it has definitely given my mind plenty to chew on—thank you, Zoe Hawk, for the delicious nightmare.