Henri with a Soft Meteor

Physicality and the human body are recurring themes in Pinto’s art. In the early 1980s she began work on her “Henri Series,” a group of images inspired by a childhood hero, Henri LaMothe. LaMothe was Pinto’s neighbor and a former Olympic swimmer who performed humorous yet death-defying feats of physical prowess, such as diving from a four-story platform into shallow water and landing on his stomach. Pinto has described LaMothe as “an adult who acted out fantasies and had a great time doing it with tremendous energy and humor.” She has also referred to him as her alter ego. Here she portrays LaMothe as an androgynous figure in silhouette, careening through the sky, in superhuman fashion, perhaps reclining on the soft meteor. The thickly applied swaths of watercolor create large, bold, opaque images that subvert the notion of the medium as placid and intimate.