Thundi 2010

Sally Gabori made this painting, Thundi, with what looks like acrylic on canvas, and the gestures are pretty dominant. I can almost feel her moving the brush with big sweeps of colour. The painting feels like it came into being through a back-and-forth, a process of trial and error, until something clicked. The colours are so vibrant, like a memory or a dream. I think the artist might have been thinking about the landscape around her home, and how to translate the feeling of the place into shapes and colours. There’s a push and pull between the black and the bright yellows and pinks – a sense of light and shadow, maybe. These colours, the textures, they all shape how we experience the painting. It's not just about what we see, but how it makes us feel. Like a conversation between the artist and the viewer, across time and space.