Untitled 1940

Tom Lovell made this untitled painting using oils sometime in the mid twentieth century. Look at those bold brushstrokes, especially in the background figures. It's like he's sketching with paint, finding the scene as he goes, a real process nerd! Up close, the texture of the paint is pretty smooth, but you can see the marks where he layered the colors to create the shadows on the man's face. Check out the highlights on the woman's face and the subtle tonal variations, it gives her this incredible luminosity. The composition, with the white space on the left, reminds me a bit of magazine illustration and a kind of narrative ambiguity. Lovell's loose style and dramatic storytelling reminds me of some of the noir painters of the period. It's a reminder that art is a conversation across time and styles, where artists borrow, riff, and reimagine what comes before. There is no single right answer to what a work means; it is more about what it makes you feel.