Woman 1985

Otto Muehl made this painting of a woman with watercolours and ink, and look at those dominant red gestural marks. Can’t you just imagine Muehl in the act of painting? The work seems to have come into being impulsively, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. I sympathize with the artist and wonder what it might have been like to create this raw image. What might he have been thinking when he made it? The paint is thin, so it was probably made quickly. The surface is quite rough. That single gesture to define the red mass of her hair is so successful. It communicates feeling, intention, and meaning. It relates to his wider practice and body of work, as well as the work of other painters such as Kokoschka, Schiele, and de Kooning. Artists are in an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. This painting is a form of embodied expression which embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meaning over fixed or definitive readings.