Before Songs 1962

Alice Baber made this watercolour work, ‘Before Songs’, maybe in the middle of the 20th century, a shifting and shimmering meditation in pigment. You can feel the paper buckle under the wetness, a total surrender to fluidity. I wonder what Alice was thinking, maybe she'd been reading Gaston Bachelard, thinking about water as a psychic substance that flows and connects. This isn't landscape painting but the memory of it, filtered through layers of thought and feeling. This is optical and haptic and demands an open heart. See that stroke of green, how it pulls your eye upward, like a plant reaching for light. Look at the balance between control and accident. It's like Alice is dancing with the paint, letting it lead, but also knowing when to step in and guide the process. She knew Helen Frankenthaler. I imagine their conversations, as they explored the possibilities of colour. Painting's an ongoing exchange of ideas, an evolving and embodied expression, with multiple interpretations and meanings.