Stik 2017

David Michael Hinnebusch made "Stik," a painting where color feels like it's both exploding and imploding all at once. The paint in this one is laid down in such a way that it feels almost reckless. It's not about perfection, but about the raw energy of putting paint to surface. The colors are bold, but kinda clashy. Like, the pinks and greens shouldn't work, but somehow they do? I keep coming back to the hand raised up in the top left corner. It’s so gestural, almost like a kid's drawing, but it's also reaching, grasping for something, or maybe pushing something away. Hinnebusch reminds me of other intuitive painters like Alfred Jensen, who also had this way of loading up his images with personal signifiers. "Stik" isn't trying to be anything other than what it is: a messy, beautiful record of one artist's inner world. It's this realness that makes the whole thing so compelling.