The Eye 1965

Beauford Delaney’s “The Eye” is a painting conjured from thickly layered strokes of color and texture, built up into a profile set against a luminous golden ground. I can imagine Delaney in his studio, brush in hand, coaxing form from the canvas. The paint is applied with a feverish intensity, little dashes of blue, red, and brown swirling together to create the shadowed skin, a counterpoint to the vivid yellow. Look at the way he’s rendered the eye—it's not just an organ of sight, but a radiant, all-seeing presence. Delaney's work always felt like a quest for light, a struggle to capture the inner radiance of his subjects. In this work, the influence of painters like Van Gogh and Monet are palpable. Artists are always wrestling with the ghosts of their forebears. They take something, shift it, break it, and make it new. It’s one continuous conversation. Paintings like this remind us that seeing is never passive; it’s an act of imagination.