Ebb Tide 1975

Norman Lewis made this painting, Ebb Tide, by letting watery dark pigment pool and settle on the canvas. It’s like a dark night, but there is something eerily present about the lightness in the lower half of the painting. Looking at those looping, ghostly forms I imagine Lewis coaxing them into being, wiping them back, layering them until they seemed just right. I wonder what it might have felt like to let the painting unfold this way, with restraint and also with patience? The inky blackness surrounding the light feels unresolved, intentionally ambiguous. It’s almost as if he is trying to paint something that is both there and not there, concrete and ephemeral. It makes me think about Ad Reinhardt, and the way he built up his ‘ultimate’ black paintings. Painters are always in conversation with one another, even across generations, trying to solve similar problems with paint.