Confrontation 1968

Merton Simpson made this work on paper, seemingly with ink or watercolor in shades of grey, black and white. You can really see his hand in the gestures. It’s like he’s building up an image through layers of bold, intuitive marks. I can only imagine him, brush in hand, circling the image. Maybe he was grappling with something deeply personal. The more I look, the more I think of an abstracted face staring back at you. Those heavy strokes of dark ink, they almost feel like the weight of looking, like the weight of seeing, you know? It kind of reminds me of de Kooning, in the sense of trying to resolve something. The cool thing about painting is that it's this ongoing conversation, right? Artists are always riffing off each other, picking up threads, and spinning them into something new.