Description
The narrowest canvas in the group, barely 50 centimetres across. A woman sits against a saturated ochre ground in a dark red dress, one leg extended, a bare foot at the bottom edge. Her hand is spread flat across her face, fingers up and palm out, and beneath it the features have gone.
The gold ground gives the painting the flat, airless light of an icon, which makes the erasure read less as a wound than as a decision. The gesture is both shielding and cancelling.
