Untitled (Birthing) 2019

Editor: So, this is Luchita Hurtado's "Untitled (Birthing)," created in 2019 using drawing, watercolor, and acrylic. I'm really struck by how the composition directs my gaze upwards, almost like I'm looking up through a…well, something. What do you see in this piece? Curator: Oh, it's a visual poem, isn’t it? I get this profound sense of looking into something…primordial, maybe? Like Hurtado is channeling an inner landscape, perhaps even connecting it to the cosmic. Do you feel that stark, bright teal pushing upward? It’s like potential, possibility, forcing its way into existence from… what looks like, as the title suggest, a birthing canal, rendered in a earthy tone watercolor wash, so muted, raw, yet so very, very real. Almost painful, in its delivery… Editor: Yeah, I see that. I was initially so focused on the composition, but now, with the title in mind, and what you’re saying, that upward thrust feels way more charged. It makes me think about cycles and origins. Do you think Hurtado intended that to be the reading or is that coming solely from our perspective? Curator: I suspect she wanted to stir *exactly* these sorts of questions, perhaps even elude definitive answers. Isn’t that part of what makes Hurtado so endlessly compelling? The way her images reside just out of reach, whispering secrets, while asking what it means to come into being, as we ponder about how she came to paint the becoming, itself? Editor: Definitely! It's given me a lot to think about - a very generative "birth," of perspective if nothing else. Curator: Absolutely, I’m leaving this with a newfound understanding. And what a powerful act: to birth perspectives.