Sea Rocks 1981

Alexander Bogen made this painting titled "Sea Rocks" with watery strokes of blues and greens, with a touch of vibrant reds and darker blues clustered on the right side. The way the paint is applied looks like it's been scrubbed onto the canvas, so that the image seems to emerge from the surface. You can see a kind of push and pull, a dialogue happening right there on the canvas as the artist works to capture the essence of the sea and rocks. I imagine Bogen standing before his easel, wrestling with the image, trying to pin down that fleeting feeling of being by the ocean. There's a real sense of physicality, with the paint applied in layers, creating depth and texture. Those gestural marks, they aren't just depicting something, they're communicating a feeling, a sense of the artist's own movement and energy. The marks here remind me of Joan Mitchell’s gestural abstraction, or maybe even Turner's seascapes, where the atmosphere is almost overwhelming. It's like artists are always in conversation across time. And for me, I think painting is about embracing that ambiguity, allowing for multiple readings and meanings.