Ebb Tide 1975

Norman Lewis made this painting, Ebb Tide, with oil on canvas. Look at how the blacks and blues in this canvas are activated by these rhythmic, looping white forms. It's a kind of dance, right? The mood of this piece hangs on a knife-edge - it feels menacing but also uplifting, like a storm cloud might be. Lewis seems to have scrubbed and dragged the paint across the surface of the canvas, creating these gorgeous textured effects. Everything is kind of smudgy and indistinct, but, if you look closely, you can see how these marks have been made with a dry brush. It's really all about the surface here. You can imagine Lewis working and reworking this painting, responding to what was already there in a kind of call and response. It reminds me a little of some of the work of Arthur Dove, who also used abstraction as a way to capture the essence of nature. Ultimately, what this painting says to me is that art is a conversation.