Free At Last 2021

Kayla Mahaffey made this painting called Free At Last sometime in the 20th century using a variety of gestural marks and a vibrant colour palette. Look at the way Mahaffey has built up the painting’s surface, with layers of colour and form shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. I feel for Mahaffey, I can only imagine what it must have been like to create this painting, what she might have been thinking when she made it. The paint feels thin in places but look how the textures work with that red ribbon. A particular gesture like that can communicate feeling, intention, and meaning. I wonder if the painting relates to Mahaffey's wider practice and body of work, as well as the work of other figurative painters. Artists are always in an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting is this amazing form of embodied expression that embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meanings over fixed or definitive readings.