Ehr 1972

James Brooks made Ehr with oil on canvas, and it’s a moody dance of blues, blacks, and whites, kind of like a nocturnal reverie. I can just imagine him, brush in hand, lost in thought, building up these layers. Look at the way that milky white form rises from the bottom left, almost ghostly, against the deep, inky ground. It’s like a pale echo, a memory surfacing. Brooks is really playing with the push and pull of color, the way the blues advance and recede, creating this atmospheric depth. I wonder if he was thinking of Rothko, or maybe even de Kooning, those guys were all swirling around in similar vibes back then, each trying to find their own voice in the abstract. That one bold stroke of black, slicing across the top, feels so decisive, so sure. But then, everything else is kind of hazy, ambiguous. And that’s what’s so great about painting, isn't it? It’s a conversation, a back-and-forth, where you never quite know where you’re going to end up.