Horses I 1997

Robert Goodnough made this painting called 'Horses I' using brushstrokes that read like notes in a visual symphony. The paint's applied with a real tactile sense, like each dab and stroke is a thought being formed right there on the canvas. Look closely and you can almost see the artist's hand moving, deciding, and reacting. The colors, earthy browns mixed with blues and greens, evoke a feeling of nature, but it’s not trying to copy nature; it’s more like nature remembered, felt, and then reimagined. There's this one dark brown brushstroke near the top – it's bold and confident, and it sort of anchors everything else around it. It’s like a keystone, and everything cascades down and outwards from it. It reminds me a little of Joan Mitchell, where abstraction becomes a language of feeling. It’s this ongoing conversation, where one artwork speaks to another, across time, about how we see, how we feel, and what it means to be alive.