Untitled 1980

This untitled painting by Jorge Camacho is all about the process, a journey through warm reds and oranges. The paint isn’t fighting to be anything other than itself, it’s relaxed, soaked into the canvas. Look closely at that figure on the left, like a magician's tower with a pointy hat. It’s solid but broken, like it's been unearthed in an archeological dig, the paint like layers of earth. It’s not illusionistic, yet, the color creates a kind of hot desert atmosphere. The white shapes at the bottom suggest bones, or a discarded snakeskin. Camacho reminds me a little of Leonora Carrington, with his surrealism, but he’s doing his own thing, like a solo in a band. The painting isn’t telling us what to think, it's creating a space where things can happen, where meanings can shift and change, like a dream.