Samba 2005

Ron Gorchov made Samba with paint, and I imagine it was slow going, each red form carefully negotiated against a darkening ground. You can feel the artist considering the weight of each brushstroke—that long swoosh on the left, like a tear, almost falling off the canvas, and its stubby, cautious partner to the right, keeping its distance. What was he thinking? Was he looking at Rothko, thinking about how to compress and constrict that expansiveness? I can see him, mixing paint, wiping his brush, stepping back, and squinting. There's a stillness in this painting, a quiet conversation between two shapes. They are like two dancers, moving to a rhythm only they can hear. That is the beauty of painting, it is an embodied expression of interiority, an ongoing dialogue between artists across time. We are always building on what came before, reinterpreting, responding, and making something new.