San Luis Potosí, Mexico 1975

This is Ed Grazda’s photograph, taken in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, and it's all about layers. The photograph captures the interior of a room, with a mural dominating the upper half. The mural depicts a man with a warm, inviting smile. It’s a celebration of mark-making, a dance between light and shadow, a testament to the power of simple means. The textures in the mural create a captivating depth, a dialogue between the smooth and the coarse, the seen and the unseen. What is so special about this, is how the lower half is so devoid of mark making. We are brought back down to earth with an almost mundane scene of tables and chairs, yet it is this ordinariness that allows the mural to soar! I see a similar dynamic in the work of Philip Guston. Each artist uses elements of the everyday to show us how art is an ongoing dialogue, inviting us to find our own stories within the ambiguity.