Next Morning 1958

Alice Rahon’s ‘Next Morning’ is a large canvas awash with moody blues and greens and made with oil paint. I imagine Alice in her studio, pushing this painting around, letting it emerge bit by bit. See how she’s built up layers of color to create this dreamlike landscape? There’s a real push and pull between representation and abstraction here. On the one hand, you can see a pyramid-like structure that seems to rise out of the water, but then there are these ghostly white marks like wind or spirits. It’s like she’s inviting us into a world that’s both familiar and totally strange. And those thin, watery layers of paint? They give the whole thing a sense of lightness and movement, as though the scene is constantly shifting and reforming right before our eyes. It reminds me of other surrealist painters who were tapping into the unconscious, creating these otherworldly landscapes. Painters are always borrowing and building from one another! Ultimately, painting is about possibility, and Rahon invites us to dream and imagine alongside her.