Woman 1920

Here is a woman, captured in oil paint, by Thomas Hart Benton. She's bent over her hands, with strokes of yellow, pink and green describing the simple shapes of her dress. I wonder about the moment Benton decided to fix this subject in time. Did he struggle to define the forms? The brushstrokes feel immediate, like he worked quickly, trusting his eye and hand to communicate the essence of what he saw. The surface feels alive with the energy of the artist’s touch, the tactile qualities of paint building up the composition. There's this one blue stroke on the lower left, thick and confident, that tells you everything you need to know about the artist's process. It makes me think about other artists such as Fairfield Porter, who found meaning in the everyday. Ultimately, painting is this ongoing conversation across time, where each artist borrows, builds, and reinterprets the language of mark-making and form.