After the Hunt 1962

Wesley Chamberlin made this powerful portrait, After the Hunt, using dense charcoal strokes. I imagine the artist, hunkered over the paper, smudging and layering, coaxing the image out of the dark depths. The face emerges from a sea of black, eyes closed, a moment of respite or reflection after the intensity of the hunt. The lines are rough, almost urgent, mirroring the subject's inner state perhaps? I wonder what Chamberlin was thinking, channeling the emotional weight of the hunter’s experience. There's a raw energy in the marks themselves, a tension between the delicate shading of the face and the almost aggressive scribbles around it. It makes me think about Goya's dark portraits, full of psychological drama. Artists are always riffing on each other, drawing inspiration from the past while forging their own path. It’s this continuous conversation through time that makes painting so alive, so endlessly fascinating.