Zara Muse British , 1970
Meditation is a large-format female portrait in profile, acrylic on dibond (an aluminium composite panel), 108 x 108 cm including frame. The painting is built almost entirely in green: a deep forest wrap sits heavy against a ground of lime and chartreuse, the darkest passages nearly black, the background bright enough to push the figure forward. Only the face steps outside the scheme, rendered in warm peach and sand in small, deliberate knife planes. Behind the cheekbone, the background reaches its most electric point, a near-yellow that seems to emit its own light. The figure leans into it, lips just parted.
Where other works in Muse's practice hold their subjects in dense, charged atmospheres, Meditation gives its figure room. The palette is narrower, the mood cooler, the composition built around negative space and a single, sustained green chord. It is the quietest painting in the series, and the one that most rewards being stood in front of for some time.
Meditation is an original, one-of-one large-format palette knife painting, acrylic on dibond, 108 x 108 cm including frame. This work has been sold. To enquire about similar available works by Zara Muse, contact Eclectic Gallery, Fitzrovia, London.
