Effacement des noirs 2011

Albert Bitran made this painting, Effacement des noirs, with oils, and what looks like a whole lot of solvent. It is an image that has come into being through wiping away as much as by application. I can imagine Bitran in his studio, pushing the paint around, wrestling with the image. What to keep, what to erase? The ghostly layers feel like pentimenti, a record of the artist's changes and hesitations, each layer informing the next. The way he’s thinned the paint gives it an incredible luminosity. It's as if he's not just painting on the canvas, but into it. There's this incredible tension between the dark, almost violent marks and the delicate washes of white and gray. And that little spot of red is like a tiny ember glowing in the darkness, right? It makes me think of Robert Motherwell's elegies—the way they use simple shapes and colors to express deep emotions. It's a reminder that painting is an ongoing conversation, one that we're all invited to join. Each artist builds on what came before, pushing the boundaries of what's possible. And maybe that's what painting is all about: embracing the unknown, and finding meaning in the process itself.