Red 6 2022

Monica Ikegwu made this striking, small-scale painting with oils on what looks like either canvas or wood. It’s like she dove headfirst into a pool of red, pulling out this profile in the thick of it. The whole piece pulses with this warm monochrome—a concentrated field of ruby that makes you feel almost overheated, don't you think? I imagine Monica, in her studio, coaxing out the form with these delicate strokes. Maybe she was thinking about Caravaggio, or some other painterly forbear working within the constraints of light and dark, because her approach is similarly concerned with chiaroscuro, that dance between illumination and shadow. There’s such a controlled use of dark pigment to carve out the face and the hair, allowing the light to bounce off the cheek and the lips. Painters are always in conversation with each other, across time, constantly reinventing the wheel. Ikegwu’s Red 6 is a reminder of that ongoing, vibrant exchange.