Tia

Narrator: The artist Jordan Casteel describes this painting, Tia.

Jordan Casteel: What I love is the way that the figure is sandwiched between these two very patterned fields, that the pattern behind creates the form of a pillow. Even though the pillow form is actually quite absent. There are no lines defining the pillow.

The red is another moment for me, it feels like a real encasement of the figure itself. The red is all-encompassing and holds the figure with a certain clarity and comfort and belonging. There’s no escaping the red, the relationship between the red and yellow is bold as all get out. I look at this and I’m like, we are unapologetic today. I love that she’s making those decisions consciously, unconsciously, seeing what this picture needed, seeing who this person was. It seems like there’s a richness there, a softness, even within the strength.

And the socks. That turquoise in the socks is, like, so great. It is so bold! And it’s because it is meant to exist with the immense and intense amount of clarity that it does that I just accept it. It would be so easy to be taught that you shouldn’t do that. In terms of color theory, that turquoise is not meant to just exist there. And yet it does. And Jennifer has made us accept it as a sense of weight and truth or something.