Sunday Best

Original Painting by Karin Lanini Arthofer 
2023, Mixed Media on canvas
“Plunge” Series
80 x 100 x 1.5 cm 
(31” x 39” x 0.5” in)
 
 
“Sunday Best” evokes the idea of what we choose to show the world in “official” moments: our Sunday best, white and pristine, worn on special occasions when we present ourselves in our most polished, composed and socially acceptable form.
Yet no defined figure appears in this painting. Instead, layers and translucent washes emerge, revealing the distance between outward appearance and inner reality.
“Sunday Best” thus becomes a metaphor for identity, suspended between mask and authenticity, between what is visible and what remains hidden.
The soft colours evoke the freshness and luminosity of a white Sunday outfit, while at the same time revealing its delicacy. The painting suggests that true beauty does not lie in displayed perfection, but in the traces of lived experience in the cracks, imperfections and marks left by time.