Series VII, No. 7d 1920

Hilma af Klint’s ‘Series VII, No. 7d’ is a watercolour on paper, and the act of its making feels like a quest to grasp the ungraspable. The circular form hovers above a geometric landscape like some kind of divine colour wheel, or a portal perhaps. I wonder what Hilma was thinking as she painted this, what drove her need to map the spiritual world through colour and form? There’s a tension between the softer, more intuitive rendering of the circle, and the hard-edged, more rational shapes below. The paint is applied thinly, in translucent layers that allow the paper to breathe. I’m drawn to the small, jewel-like center of the circle, a vortex of swirling colours. Af Klint reminds me of Agnes Martin, another artist who channelled abstraction to express something beyond the visible. They’re both part of this extended conversation, influencing each other across time and space. Painting at its best is an embodied expression of the unknown.