Pippi Floating 2017

David Michael Hinnebusch made 'Pippi Floating' using layers of paint and intuitive marks. I see a space that's been built up over time. Did he start with the blue grid, I wonder, or did that come later? Look at the way the colors clash and harmonize—reds and blues battling it out, with flashes of yellow trying to break through. I imagine Hinnebusch, brush in hand, responding to what’s already there, adding a line, a blob, a scratch, each mark a decision, a correction, a revelation. That swooping gesture in the center—it’s like a dance move, a fleeting thought captured in paint! It makes me think of de Kooning and his crazy lines. Hinnebusch is part of that conversation, that lineage of painters wrestling with the messy, beautiful act of putting paint on canvas. There’s such a sense of freedom in this piece; it feels like anything could happen, and maybe that’s the point.