Fishes 2011

Frank Bowling made "Fishes" with oil paint. Just imagining him, in his studio, maybe decades ago, working on this painting, trying to capture something fluid, elusive. I'm drawn to the way Bowling handles the paint. There’s so much texture, like he’s wrestling with the stuff, coaxing it into these incredible shapes. The red marks dart across the surface like, well, like fish! They feel spontaneous, but I bet each one was carefully considered. You get the sense of movement, a flurry of activity beneath the surface. It's not hard to see the influence of other painters in Bowling's work. He's clearly in conversation with the Abstract Expressionists, those giants of the mid-20th century who were all about gesture and feeling. But he's also doing his own thing, pushing the boundaries of what paint can do. What I love about painting is that it's an ongoing dialogue, artists responding to each other across time. We're all just trying to make sense of the world, one brushstroke at a time.