David Landau 2008

Frank Auerbach made this painting of David Landau, and you can see how the whole image is built from thick slabs of buttery paint in a limited palette of blues, browns, and fleshy pinks. I like to imagine Auerbach working on this, wrestling with the figure, scraping away, starting again, trying to conjure a likeness, almost like he’s digging it out from the canvas itself. I think it must have been hard. I sympathize with the artist here, layering brushstroke upon brushstroke, each dab and smear a negotiation between abstraction and representation. See the way he drags the paint across the surface, building up a rough, almost sculptural texture? It reminds me of Bomberg, another painter who was invested in the materiality of paint. That upward stroke of lavender, for instance, could be a hand gesture, a trick of the light, or just the sheer joy of putting color to surface. These painters show us that painting is about the act of seeing, thinking, and feeling. It’s about an ongoing conversation between artists across time, inspiring each other. It's a process of discovery that embraces ambiguity and uncertainty.