^{Patricia Hagen’s Breach (2008), watercolor on paper, 22 by 30 inches}

Hagen makes paintings based on bacteria, viruses, and “various” organisms, meaning that these are portraits of living things, despite the fact that they are unrecognizable. What I can’t help but consider when I look at her work is that these dripping and oddly shaped things could be inside my body right now for all I know.

The most unnerving part of this one for me is that soft brownish bulb that points downward and to the left, and is slightly squished at the place where it connects with the other, brightly colored bulbs. It’s definitely not like the others: the light hits it differently, and it falls outside the pink-and-blue color scheme of the blooms. It reminds me of those wild forms by Louise Bourgeois, which are both male and female, human and alien. The body is so impossibly opaque!

I realize this is weird, but part of the reason I’m posting this is that I found out last week that my father is going to have to have intestinal surgery soon. My father lives far away from here, and I won’t be there. I sort of wish someone could make a portrait of what’s inside him for me. Yeah, I’m the kind of person who likes watching surgeries, but I’ve also never really understood my father. I’d like to hang a portrait of his intestines on my mantel next to my photograph of him from before I was born, wearing his mutton chops, sitting at a typewriter.

At PUNCH Gallery. (Gallery web site here.)