Hours 2018

Aaron Nagel made this portrait, ‘Hours’ with oil paint, and the surface looks like it's worked and reworked. I imagine him thinking through each layer, building the image slowly. You can see that history in the ghostly marks around her face, like half-erased thoughts. The tally marks at the top left, the title spelled out in capital letters on the upper right, all float within the same soft background. It gives the portrait a feeling of existing within time, or maybe the painting itself took a long time. I find myself focusing on the softness around her eyes – there's so much depth there. It reminds me of Jenny Saville's portraits, how she uses paint to explore the inner lives of her subjects, to suggest a rich interior that can't be fully captured. Painting is like that: an attempt to embody something fleeting, and Nagel is part of that grand, ongoing conversation.