Miss Chief's Wet Dream 2018

Kent Monkman painted "Miss Chief's Wet Dream", and there's an audacity to the vision and the way he handled the oil on canvas, like he's diving right into art history itself. The colours are vivid, almost theatrical, but it’s the mark-making that grabs you, a blend of meticulous detail and looser, more expressive strokes. It’s all about texture here, the skin tones rendered with a fleshy, almost sculptural quality. Look at how he captures the movement of the water, those gestural sweeps of blues and greens. It’s so dynamic it almost feels like you could reach out and touch the waves. Then, those figures, like the bull-headed man at the left; the way Monkman handles form, there’s a tension between classical and something wilder, almost punk. Monkman's definitely having a dialogue with artists like Delacroix, but he's twisting the narrative, queering it, Indigenizing it. It’s like he’s saying art history is not a done deal, but an ongoing conversation, full of possibilities.