Top Floor 1965

Benny Andrews made this painting, called Top Floor, with paint on canvas. I can imagine him in his studio, moving the paint around, sometimes thinly, sometimes more thickly, especially in the wallpaper pattern. The hunched figure at the table—maybe Andrews put himself in that pose, head in hands? He’s got an open book in front of him, but it seems like his mind's elsewhere. I wonder if he felt stuck, cornered? All that wallpaper pushing in! That green rug on the floor is great. A slash of artificial color. It's funny how the painter put the horizon line so high in the composition. It's like we're looking down on this guy. The simple forms remind me of Milton Avery.