Like a song out of time 

Curator: Looking at this canvas, I see a certain melancholy – the figure’s posture and obscured face give off a feeling of introspection, perhaps even sadness. Editor: Well, let's ground ourselves. The piece, “Like a Song Out of Time,” by Cathrine Edlinger-Kunze, is striking for its visible oil paint layers, applied with visible brush strokes and impasto techniques. The sheer physicality of the paint is crucial here. Curator: The title certainly adds to the evocative quality. “Like a Song Out of Time"... It suggests something haunting, maybe even a memory that's hard to grasp. Editor: Right, and you can see how the application reflects that uncertainty. The visible layers speaks volumes of process; it is worked, reworked. It embodies time and labour. Curator: I'm particularly drawn to the almost dreamlike quality of the rendering. The nude form, rendered in such soft, muted colors, seems to exist in a space between the physical and ethereal. Editor: Exactly, and it is what oil paint excels at providing. The medium is critical to consider for expression such qualities of time. Look, see how the shades intermingle? Note that such effects couldn't be made so tactile by say watercolour, which depends so much more on washes and surface tension. Curator: The artist makes intriguing choices by obscuring the figure's face; it seems the figure has no identity. It encourages viewers to project their own emotions and experiences onto the artwork, turning it into something deeply personal. Editor: The painting's ambiguity, combined with its materiality, opens up a space for reflection not just on feeling, but also the artist's work, labour, material limitations and choices. Its material basis and presentation allow that psychological impact. Curator: Thinking about those shadows around the form, there’s a universal theme that resonates– vulnerability, maybe the sense of being adrift. What else could that imagery of darkness represent? Editor: Perhaps it is simply shadow as shadow, darkness as absence, something made physically out of materials, the painting is. Not everything has to have deeper psychological connections you know, and that focus detracts from other readings. I would hate to reduce that impact from physical toil as labour down to nothing but mental states. Curator: Interesting! Well, I find myself more immersed in the subjective story suggested. Editor: And I, the means of that story's expression! Regardless, the artist leaves us contemplating themes of time, labour and what resonates in both painting and feeling.