Inflorescence 2018

Soey Milk's painting ‘Inflorescence’ is a garden of gestures and dreamy figuration. Can you imagine how the painting came into being, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition? I can feel Soey Milk’s tenderness towards her subject through the strokes of oil paint. There is a sense of calm about her subject who sits in a meditative state. As a painter, I often wonder if painting is a kind of meditation, a chance to listen more deeply to the world as I build up layers of brushstrokes. She’s clearly exploring how figuration can emerge from abstraction. The dark swathes of paint remind me of Cecily Brown’s work. But there’s something else going on here too; Soey Milk has a real talent for bringing different elements together, and creating a world that feels both familiar and totally strange. What do you think?