The Wee Wilderness VI 2012

Lisa Yuskavage has created a watercolor painting that pulls you into its intimate embrace. It's a world of soft washes and delicate lines, but it’s got some strange unsettling details in the figure’s posture. Look at the way the paint bleeds and blurs, giving the scene an ethereal, dreamlike quality. I bet Lisa was thinking about the way identity shifts and blurs as she made it. The figure, neither fully present nor entirely absent, embodies a sense of yearning. I imagine her in the studio, lost in thought, letting the colors flow and blend until this mysterious figure emerges. The way she leaves the composition so open makes me think of other painters, like Nicole Eisenman, who aren’t afraid to be a bit weird, awkward even, and who use that to explore something fundamental about being human. You can really see that conversation between artists across time. Painting is about embracing uncertainty, finding meaning in the unexpected, and allowing for multiple readings.