Anina E. Hathaway creates dripping meditations on the nature of consciousness and perception. Similar to a liquid, awareness seems capable of taking on many forms as is determines the composition and arrangement of materials objects. Following this, there is often a patina of obscurity in Hathaway’s work: a sort of foregrounded layer that occludes a landscape situated directly behind it. As a compositional maneuver, this foregrounded layer makes what lies behind it appear more tantalizing than it otherwise would.
The painting titled 2013.III.19 is quite possibly Hathaway’s most watery work, depicting a landscape that verges into blue abstraction. The thick, stalactites of paint forming at the top of the canvas seem to drip downwards like candle-wax, obscuring the brushwork that underlies it. The application of an added layer of paint over an original surface lends the work a sculptural quality, the cavernous space suggested by the second layer of paint echoing the tactility of actual stone reflecting the aura of lambent light. The branching formations at the bottom left of the canvas only enhances painting’s organic feel.
