The Tree 1967

Haroutiun Galentz made this painting, which is called "The Tree", with what looks like bright swathes of oil paint. I imagine that it probably came into being through a process of layering and adjustment, a kind of call and response between the artist and the canvas. I'm thinking about Galentz and his process, what it might have been like to create this image. The greens and blues are laid down pretty flatly. The paint doesn’t seem too thick, it’s almost like he's staining the canvas. Then there’s these big, gestural marks of pink and purple that cut through the composition like slashes. It’s these abstract forms that suggest the tree. I wonder if he was looking at Matisse or Derain, and then I think about his Armenian heritage and how that might have played into the artwork. I feel that artists are always in conversation, across time and space. Painting is like this embodied exchange, it embraces ambiguity and uncertainty. You never really know what it means, and maybe that’s the point.