Het heden, het verleden 1950 - 2009

Harrie Gerritz made this print called "Het heden, het verleden" - that's "the present, the past" - and right away I'm thinking about how every mark carries a kind of history. I mean, look at that bright green rectangle. You can almost see Gerritz laying down the color, maybe with a loaded brush, maybe with a roller, building up that juicy surface. And then, on top of that, this simple, almost childlike drawing of an animal. It's like a memory, or a dream of a memory. And those stripes! Each one a different color, a different mood. It makes me think of Agnes Martin's quiet grids, or maybe even the landscape paintings of someone like Milton Avery. How are we marking time and how are we feeling the resonance of these simple colors and shapes together? We painters are all in conversation, borrowing and stealing and riffing off each other all the time, across generations. It's an ongoing, messy, beautiful conversation, and this print is a little piece of that.