Untitled 1993

Here is a work by Purvis Young, of no fixed date, that seems to have been made with whatever was to hand. Have you ever felt like layering and layering until something appears? This painting has that feel. There’s a ground of salvaged cardboard and who-knows-what, covered with vertical strokes in white and pastel colors. You can imagine Purvis building this up, trying to find the image within. It's almost like a form of erasure, or maybe a kind of stubbornness – keep going until something breaks through. I love the way it hints at other worlds and other paintings that came before. It reminds me of Guston, but also a lot of other painters who are just trying to find a way to make something new out of nothing. The physicality of the paint, those strokes, are all about feeling and intention, like one long conversation between artists, across time, that keeps inspiring new ways of seeing. It's a conversation I feel part of too.