Awelye 1995

Emily Kame Kngwarreye made "Awelye" and I’m diving into it with you. It’s this field of pinks and reds, not quite solid, more like a memory of color. The paint feels scrubbed in, doesn’t it? Like she’s pushing the color into the surface, making it part of the weave, kinda raw. There’s this one line of marks running down the left – they look like little rectangles, a strange interruption in the overall flow. It's almost like a coded message, or a rhythm against the more chaotic fields of color. And those colors! They vibrate, a soft buzz of pink against pink. Kngwarreye makes me think of Joan Mitchell, someone else unafraid of letting feeling lead the way. Both artists show us that art is a conversation, not a lecture, and that there's always room for another voice, another vision.