Girl at Night 1966

Howard Hodgkin made this artwork called, Girl at Night, with an inquisitive use of colour and geometric shapes. It’s like a set of stacked forms—red, white, pink—all swimming in a vast sea of black. There’s something deeply sympathetic about the way Hodgkin approaches his art, I feel like he’s always searching. I can imagine him carefully plotting out the shapes, perhaps starting with a sketch, and then responding to how each layer interacts with the others. The forms are kind of hard and soft at the same time, and the red, white, and pink remind me of lipstick. Does it remind me of other painters? Yeah, of course. Helen Frankenthaler, maybe, or even Matisse. Artists are constantly talking to each other. It's like, ‘Hey, I saw what you did, and here’s my take on it'. Anyway, it’s lovely, I can imagine coming back to this one a few times.