Midnight 2011

Bernadette Resha made this painting, Midnight, using watercolours with a kind of scruffy, searching mark making. The cat emerges from the brown of the painting with soft edges and fuzzy fur, almost like a memory of a cat. There's a real sense of the materiality of the paint, it feels like the brown washes have been layered, and the texture of the paper almost becomes part of the image. The artist allows the watercolours to bloom and blur, which gives the piece a ghostly, dreamlike quality. I really love how the eyes are reduced to these simple crescent shapes. Resha’s painting reminds me of the work of Alice Neel. Like Neel, Resha has the confidence to leave things unresolved, focusing on capturing a fleeting essence rather than a photographic likeness. Painting doesn't need to be about perfection; it can be about feeling and process, embracing the beauty of the imperfect.