The work: Kirsty Black, Mousey Mousey, 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 76cm. $2,095. Courtesy: the artist
New Zealand-based artist Kirsty Black envisions abstract art as a conversation: “there is a sense of give and take with the interesting ones, taking on a life of their own and arriving at unexpected destinations.” They contain an intellectual adventure, relishing in the limits of the imagination and a sense of curiosity. In her work Mousey Mousey, freeform configurations of energetic hues and mark-making come together in a composition that exudes movement and joy. Black’s approach in this piece is gestural and vigorous, whilst leaving plenty of negative space to give her painterly rhetoric room to breathe. The artist has made the most out of her medium, using an array of brush sizes to apply contrasting passages of thick-bodied black acrylic and fluid washes to lead the eye on a dynamic journey across the canvas. What this journey entails is left up to the viewer, though the work’s title gives hints to the artist’s readings, with mousey evoking visions of tiny scurrying critters, rushing about in the grass. Black here recalls impressions of the organic or the natural, with a sense of freedom and purity that one associates with the uncomplicated rhythms of the landscape. “The resulting forms that reveal themselves morph into a story, akin to cloud gazing,” says Black.