Invocation 1982

Audrey Flack’s ‘Invocation’ seems to have arrived through a process of layering and collaging, where images have been painstakingly rendered and arranged into a composition. I imagine Flack, hunched over this piece, carefully considering each element—the skull, the roses, the burning candle—and how they talk to each other. There’s something about the light in this piece that's interesting, isn't it? It's like she's trying to capture not just how things look, but the feeling they evoke. The bright oranges and reds, for example, feel warm, but the skull and the melting candle give the warmth a sense of urgency. You can almost feel the ephemerality of beauty and life as you gaze into the vacant eye sockets of the skull. The very act of arranging, layering, and re-arranging these objects is how the painting comes into being. It reminds me of the still life paintings of the Dutch Masters. Artists are always in conversation, aren't they?