Dry Dock on Curaçao 1959

Suzanne Perlman's 'Dry Dock on Curaçao', likely made with oil on canvas, explodes with a kind of post-cubist energy, all fractured planes of greens, yellows and blues. I can imagine Suzanne standing before the easel, brush dancing, trying to capture the essence of the dry dock, not just how it looks but how it feels. Those curving yellow strokes could be the harsh sunlight glinting off the metal and water, or maybe the weight of the air. It’s all a bit clumsy, a bit off, and that’s precisely what I love about it! Look at how she lets those colours bleed into each other, like memories fading at the edges. There’s a push-and-pull that feels so unresolved, almost as if the painting is permanently under construction. It reminds me of Guston, or even de Kooning, this sense of searching, where the painting becomes this record of an artist wrestling with the world. We see them searching and questioning, their own uncertainty, their own humanity.