Still Life 1957

Craig Kauffman made this ‘Still Life’ painting with confident strokes of oil paint. I imagine the canvas was on the floor and he was straddling it, reaching out in all directions, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. I sympathize with the artist. I can almost feel what it must have been like to create this; the heavy, buttery paint and the smell of turpentine filling the studio. Look how the yellow paint oozes and drips from the forms, while other areas are scraped back to reveal the canvas beneath. The black lines create a sense of dynamism and movement as if the whole composition is suspended, quivering, in a state of becoming. I can relate. It reminds me of other painters like Philip Guston and Joan Mitchell. Artists are always in an ongoing conversation, exchanging ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting is an embodied expression which embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations.