On The Hook 2020

Here we have Kayla Mahaffey’s painting, a swirl of bright colors and emotional intensity. It feels like she’s fearlessly thrown everything at once onto the canvas. I can imagine Mahaffey stepping back, squinting, and then diving back in with a new color or a bold line. There is an unsettling juxtaposition of innocence and trauma, with the central figure, a child, caught in a moment of pain or distress. Around them, these cartoonish elements add to the overall sense of surrealism, almost like a bad dream. I like how Mahaffey isn’t afraid to mix it up, combining realism with the playful elements of cartoons and graffiti. It reminds me that the history of painting is like a big, ongoing conversation, where artists riff off each other, borrowing and remixing ideas. Ultimately, painting is about feeling and sensing. It’s this constant dance of trying to capture something real, even if it’s messy and imperfect.