Field Notes 2016

Joshua Flint painted Field Notes using oil paint, and it’s all about layering and letting the process show. There’s a real push and pull in the paint handling. Look closely, and you can see how Flint builds up the image with thin washes, allowing drips and stains to remain visible – like watery ghosts. In contrast, the figures are more densely rendered, especially the one on the right, emerging from a cloud of intense reds and blues. I see the texture in this cloud as less about describing a solid object and more about evoking a feeling, maybe of warmth, or even danger. The ladder in the bottom left, rendered in looser strokes of orange, seems to ground the whole composition, but also throws the perspective off in an interesting way. This painting reminds me a little of early Gerhard Richter, in the way it embraces both representation and abstraction, and suggests that the real subject might be the slippery nature of seeing itself.