Untitled [C85-139] 1985

Hannelore Baron made this little cloth collage, with its ochre and white palette, at some point in her lifetime. I wonder if Baron started with these scraps of fabric and built up the composition intuitively, shifting them around until they felt just right. Those stains, that yellowy ochre! I can imagine her delicately layering the materials, perhaps pasting and stitching them together, building a history of lived experience into the surface. There's a particular tension between the rough texture of the cloth and the fragile lines drawn on top. Those subtle gestures, like whispers on the surface, suggest feeling, maybe longing. There’s something so tactile about her work, so rooted in the materials themselves. You see a kinship with other artists who embrace imperfection and vulnerability, like Cy Twombly. Artists are in constant dialogue, passing ideas across time, inspiring each other. Painting is this wonderful embodied expression, open to interpretation and allowing for so many different readings, you know?