Awakening of the Buddha 2015

Alexander Roitburd's "Awakening of the Buddha" is a painting full of these luscious strokes of yellow and fiery oranges. It feels like the artist really laid it down, wet-on-wet, building up this glowing, almost dreamlike surface. I’m thinking about how the artist, Roitburd, must have been feeling, standing there, brush in hand, trying to capture the essence of awakening. The way the sun bleeds into the water, that long vertical stroke – it's like he’s saying something about reflection, about the self and the other, maybe even the material and the spiritual. There’s this incredible sense of light emanating from the Buddha himself. It reminds me of Rothko’s color fields, that same search for something beyond the physical world through pure color. It seems to be part of an ongoing conversation that each artist has with the painters who came before. Paintings like these remind us of our ability to think through material, to feel through color, to find meaning in the most unexpected places.