Acheron 1971

Norman Bluhm made this painting called Acheron, sometime in the 20th century, with a combination of sweeping gestures in pale yellow and layered fields of colour. Can you imagine him there, brush in hand, maybe stepping back and squinting to see how the forms emerge? The painting’s got this big, almost brooding black shape, like a dark mountain, and then these lighter, lyrical arcs floating above. It’s like he's asking, "How do these things relate to each other?" I see so much in just the texture of that black form—the tiny, white scratches that make it look like it's raining on a dark hill. It reminds me a little of Franz Kline, but with a softer touch, more like a whisper than a shout. It makes you wonder what the artist might have been feeling at the time, grappling with how to make something out of nothing, just colour and form. This feels like a moment grabbed from the ether. These artists, they're all talking to each other across time, you know? Like they are saying, "Hey, I tried this, what do you think?" It's more of a conversation than a lecture, with no one really having the last word.