New Beginnings 2020

Kayla Mahaffey’s painting, New Beginnings, presents a portrait rendered with a striking mix of realism and playful abstraction. It's like watching a memory form right before your eyes. I’m drawn to how Mahaffey lays down the paint, particularly in the skin tones, which feel smooth and airbrushed, almost like a digital rendering, while the rest of the composition is built up using flat blocks of color. There's a tension here between the tangible and the ethereal. Look at the way the hands are painted, fading from red to yellow. The artist uses a soft, airbrush-like technique which contrasts with the hard lines and blocks of color in the rest of the work. It gives them a sense of ephemerality that feels very dreamlike. Mahaffey reminds me of someone like Kerry James Marshall, who is also interested in disrupting and subverting art history. Both artists offer new ways of seeing by mixing abstraction with realist portraiture. Ultimately, painting is a conversation, and Mahaffey brings a fresh voice to the dialogue.