Repose

This is gorgeous

With her characteristic liberated loose brushwork, Gina Werfel’s "Repose" finds an alluring balance between abstraction and figuration without declaring allegiance to either. Probably a fault of my own perception, I did not notice the rosy-cheeked child relaxing in the bed of flowers at the forefront of the painting. I was too caught up with the gestural flourishes of red, green, and blue to open my eyes to the realm of figuration. However, as soon as I noticed the curly blonde hair and sky-blue dress, I could not return to the almost Abstract Expressionist composition that first greeted me. The abstractions’ ability to momentarily overpower the child’s image comes from the portions of unpainted canvas (or primed canvas painted with a neutral color; I can’t quite tell). By leaving the empty space in the foreground, Werfel gives us two paintings in one that can be equally appreciated from seemingly opposed perspectives