Heaven 1967

Benny Andrews made this painting, Heaven, using oil on canvas. The way Andrews applies paint here—dabbing, layering, and sometimes letting it drip—makes me think about how he’s not just painting a scene, but really building a world, one brushstroke at a time. Look at the texture. It's not smooth or blended. You can see the individual marks, the way the brush moved. The colors are so joyful, aren't they? It's like he's not just showing us heaven, he’s letting us feel it. Notice the way he renders the foliage in the mid-ground. See how, from a distance, it coalesces, but up close the paint handling becomes quite chaotic and abstract. I think this shows how something vague, perhaps a feeling, can be expressed through color and texture. This piece reminds me a little of Milton Avery, especially in how both artists use simplified shapes and bold color to convey a sense of mood and place. This approach to painting is less about capturing a literal scene and more about creating an atmosphere.