Overcome 2022

Martine Johanna must have spent a while working on this picture of a woman, called “Overcome,” layering and blending to get that glowing, feverish quality. I'm thinking about the moments when the artist was at the canvas, maybe feeling her own way towards something. It’s like she’s caught this woman between some kind of dream or a transformation. The way the blues and reds are set off against each other makes me think of the early days of color photography. See how the strokes around her body become like vibrating lines? That’s a brave thing to do, and it gives the painting a kind of openness, as if the figure could dissolve at any moment. It reminds me of the work of Marlene Dumas, who’s also interested in the fragility and intensity of human emotions. You can feel artists speaking to each other across time, adding to the conversation of painting, and it's through these kinds of exchanges that art continues to evolve.