Green Goddess 2021

Allison Reimold’s Green Goddess emerges in shades of green. I wonder what it was like for Reimold to make this? I imagine that the work was all about layering, one careful application of pigment after another until a sense of depth and luminosity emerged. This painting is so smooth! I am imagining it might be some kind of slow-motion construction, applying translucent glazes, then waiting for them to dry. It's the kind of painting where you feel like you could fall into the surface. The curls of leaf-like hair frame the composition, and Reimold repeats those curling forms in the shapes of the eyelids and the soft shadows around the mouth. The color unifies everything. This reminds me of earlier painters like Rossetti or Burne-Jones, with their allegorical figures and intense colors. It’s like all artists are always riffing on each other, in this long, slow conversation across time. It embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations, always more than one meaning.