Travers (Head to the Wall) 1981

Jo Baer made this large painting, Travers (Head to the Wall), with oil on canvas, and it feels like it has emerged through many veils. It's like she’s making a world out of a ghost. I can imagine Baer, in her studio, building up layers, maybe scraping some away, letting figures come and go. You can see horses running on the top, a nude figure sitting, and a scene with arrows, and these different registers speak of a personal mythology. The paint is laid on thinly, with gentle whites and creams, and some light-brown lines describing figures, as if she’s conjuring the images from the material itself. It is a muted palette and I feel like she’s saying: less is more. The work evokes the tradition of cave painting, and a history of representing bodies through the act of painting. Baer went to live in the Irish countryside at this time and she has said that she tried to 'purge my paintings of anything I thought I knew'. This purging feels very powerful.