Lord of the Rainbow 1976

Alice Baber made this watercolour, Lord of the Rainbow, with layers of luminous colour. It’s so light, like each form is breathing. Watercolours can do that – pooling and gathering, each shape softly emerging. You can see the artist shifting, intuitively trying one colour, then another. Perhaps she was led by the forms as much as the other way around. I wonder if, when she stepped back, she felt the same burst of joy that I do? The washes overlap, creating a sense of depth, as the colours float on the white ground. It makes me think of Hilma af Klint’s spiritualist paintings, and the way she, too, was invested in the unseen and the transcendental. Painting is so cool, right? This embodied expression, a conversation across time, sparking creativity and inspiring new ways of seeing.