The Beginning of Miracles: XIV 1953

"The Beginning of Miracles: XIV" by Corita Kent is made of pinky-red shapes on a creamy beige ground. It's hard to know exactly when this piece was made, but the rawness of this expression makes me feel like I am standing in the studio, watching Kent wrestle with the unknown. I can imagine her smearing and blotting the image onto the surface, pulling it back, and then coming back in again, re-adjusting. I can almost feel the physicality of the medium, the give and take between intention and chance, between a kind of control and a surrender to the unpredictable nature of the process. The surface, which looks almost like a woodcut, is built up through layers of activity, with certain gestures having a particular resonance. There are groups of people, schematic faces, lines and shapes. The artist might have been thinking about faith, or the idea of a shared communal experience? There's a dialogue happening here, a conversation between artists across time, where one person's creative spark ignites another's, and the possibilities for expression just keep expanding.