Peacock II 1990

Walasse Ting made this painting, Peacock II, with loose, splashy brushstrokes and an electric color palette that feels both intuitive and a little bit wild. Check out how Ting lets the paint drip and pool, especially in the peacock’s magnificent tail, using juicy, saturated blues and greens. See how the brushstrokes are confident but not fussy? The paint is applied wet-on-wet, so the colors blend and bleed into each other, creating a shimmering, almost hallucinatory effect. It’s like he’s capturing the peacock in mid-strut, a blur of color and motion. Ting reminds me of Joan Mitchell, in his ability to balance spontaneity with a keen eye for composition. This painting is not about perfection, but about capturing a feeling, an experience of seeing something beautiful and trying to pin it down on canvas, even if just for a moment.