The young girl in the pink dress
Aldo
Balding has the amazing quality of being able to capture a moment in time, a
sliver of memory. Balding’s style allows him to act as a voyeur to intimate
moments, which is evident through the passive nature of the figures as they do
not make eye contact with the viewer or are aware of our presence. Yet the one
figure that seems to challenge his presence is a young girl in a pink dress.
Not only does she acknowledge Balding (and the viewer), she is also appears in
more than one artwork.
This
repetition of the young girl and her unique role in his paintings is poignant.
As Balding’s philosophy is based on the human condition, it is interesting to
investigate what aspect of human nature she may represent. One theory is that
the young girl represents a figure of Balding’s subconscious. Within Freudian
theory, transference is a phenomenon characterised by a reproduction of emotions relating to repressed
experiences, especially of childhood, and the substitution of another the
original object. The reproduction of the young figure may thus be a repressed
figure from Balding’s past. What ever the reason may be, her emergence in more
than one painting is definitely note-worthy.
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