Underneath Cloth c. 1938

Marie Alain made this work, Underneath Cloth, sometime in the twentieth century using watercolor and graphite on paper. I can imagine her sitting and staring, pushing and pulling the colors around on the page to see what happened, trying to get it just right. Look at the way she uses red and blue and the star-shaped arabesque, like a rug or a textile. Alain may have been considering, perhaps, that thread is like a line, and a line is a thought. She repeats patterns, making the surface so busy, so full, yet, it feels still and contained. What was Alain trying to tell us with this visual language? Sometimes, you know, paintings and drawings can be a portal to another world, a kind of meditation or philosophical poem. Perhaps, she was having a conversation with Hilma af Klint or Agnes Martin? So much thinking and feeling, so much looking at the world, all rolled into one intense little gem!