Untitled 1999

Makinti Napanangka made this painting with acrylic on canvas, and what you notice first is the all-over composition, the bands of warm oranges and cool purples that run across the canvas like some kind of rhythm. I really love imagining her painting this, what it was like to make each mark, like a form of meditation or maybe keeping time to a song. It is not hard to imagine her, sitting on the ground, turning the canvas as she paints these bands of colour. Each painted line is so physical! You can see where the brush was loaded with paint, and the way it drags along the surface. The more I look at it, the more the painting feels so in tune with other process-based practices, a conversation between artists, each trying to find new languages of seeing and feeling. Painting can become an echo of all things seen and all things felt! It becomes a way to keep in touch with the world.