Lupulnga 2005

Makinti Napanangka made this painting, Lupulnga, with acrylic on linen, and when you look at it, you can see that the mark-making is everything. There's this field of vertical strokes in pale yellows and oranges. Then the four pod-like shapes on the right, like abstracted seed pods, made up of concentric looping strokes. The whole thing is kind of shimmering, the paint applied wet-on-wet. Nothing is overworked, everything feels so in the moment. I'm thinking about those marks and wondering, what kind of tool made them? Are they one stroke each, or were they dragged? How many decisions did the artist make? And how much of it was just, like, letting go? I love the way the painting lives in that space between deliberation and intuition. It reminds me of some of Agnes Martin's stripe paintings, but with less geometry and more heart. It's a bit like music, an ongoing conversation of marks, lines and colours.