Medeanus 1955

John Ferren made this painting, Medeanus, with fluid brushstrokes and a palette that feels both bold and quietly playful, like a visual jazz riff. I can almost picture Ferren in his studio, maybe listening to some bebop, layering these shapes and colors one over the other. The yellow, thick and sunny, pushes against the earthier tones like that murky green up top and the brown of the big blob on the right, creating this push-and-pull dynamic. And then there's that stark white line that cuts down the center like a zipper or some kind of weird division. It's like he's showing us the painting being made, the history of its own construction. There's a conversation happening here with artists like Gorky and Motherwell, this dance between abstraction and something almost recognizable, like a feeling or a memory. Painting, after all, is just a way of thinking out loud, isn't it?