Taposiris magna 2017

Mariojosé Ángeles made "Taposiris Magna," using watercolors, and the colours swim! The way the colors are applied, with loose washes and soft transitions, makes me think about how painting can be a process of letting go, of allowing the medium to guide the work. In the upper right, there's this area where yellow dissolves into white, and you can almost feel the water doing its thing, pulling the pigment along. Then your eye moves across the green, a collision of earthy green with the brighter oranges. The composition feels like a puzzle, or a collection of different thoughts overlapping one another. It's not trying to give you all the answers, and that's what's exciting about it. Thinking about colour, light and dissolution makes me think of the late work of Turner, although Ángeles’s palette is very much his own. Ultimately, this piece isn't about one fixed idea, but about the possibilities that open up when you embrace ambiguity and let the materials lead the way.