The Empress 2020

Zoe Hawk, sometime in the 20th century, probably, made this painting of an empress with some paint. I wonder what kind? Oil? Acrylic? I imagine it was oil. I can feel the artist teasing out the colors and forms, layer upon layer. There’s something about the juxtaposition of the blues and pinks with the serious gaze of the central figure which gives the work its unique power. It looks like Hawk has been looking at a lot of Renaissance paintings; at the same time, the bold, flat application of color and the rather cartoonish rendering of forms are quite contemporary. I wonder if she’s been looking at Peter Doig? Or maybe she’s trying to reinvent the visual codes of classical portraiture for the 21st century. Whatever the case, she is part of a long conversation among painters, across generations, experimenting with different ways of seeing and representing the world around us. We are all trying to figure it out as we go along.