At the Back of the North Wind 1990

Jo Baer made this large painting, "At the Back of the North Wind", using thin washes of color. It feels like she's working to uncover something, the image emerging as she explores and lets the materials guide her. The canvas is almost entirely filled with off-whites and light browns, with these thin, watery layers creating a ghostly, ethereal effect. The paint is so sheer you can see the weave of the canvas. Baer seems to be deliberately revealing her process, letting us see the bare bones of the painting's construction. Look at the way she's scratched lines into the surface, like she's mapping out a hidden world or excavating a memory. There's a sense of searching, a feeling that the painting is as much about the journey as the destination. This piece reminds me of the early, muted works of Cy Twombly, where writing and drawing blur. Both artists are interested in art as a dialogue, where meaning is never fixed, always evolving.