For The Gypsy and His Daughter 1985

Ronnie Landfield made "For The Gypsy and His Daughter," using layered washes of colour that remind me of a watercolour, where one colour bleeds softly into another. I can imagine Landfield in the studio, wrestling with this painting. Do you see how the fiery reds and oranges at the top meet the greens and yellows at the bottom? I wonder if he's thinking about landscape, or some kind of interior world. The paint is thin, almost translucent, allowing light to pass through, giving it a hazy, dreamlike quality. Look at the way the colours pool and blend, creating soft edges. It feels like a conversation between control and chance, something that I recognize in my own practice. There's a freedom in the washes of colour, but also a structure in the overall composition. And this reminds me that artists are always in conversation, riffing off of each other, borrowing, and transforming ideas across time and space. Painting is this ongoing exchange, a way of seeing and feeling that embraces ambiguity and welcomes multiple readings.