Mizar 1985

René Duvillier made this painting, Mizar, with oil on canvas. I love the feeling of those slippery, liquid washes of color, especially that intense cobalt blue that sort of snakes its way across the painting. I can just picture Duvillier working on this, maybe rotating the canvas, letting the paint drip and pool, pushing it around, coaxing these forms into being. The paint isn't overly thick, but you can still feel the physicality of it. It reminds me a little of some of Helen Frankenthaler's soak-stain paintings, where she poured thinned-out paint directly onto unprimed canvas. Of course, Duvillier is doing his own thing, but you can see how artists are always in conversation with each other, riffing on ideas, pushing the boundaries of what painting can do. It's this ongoing exchange that keeps the whole thing alive.