Bathing Beauty in Sun Hat c. late 1930s - 1940s

Rolf Armstrong rendered this bathing beauty on what looks like paper with pastel. The pastel has this soft, hazy quality, doesn't it? It is like memory or fantasy, rather than a hard fact. You can see how the marks are made, too. Look at the beach, made up of little feathery strokes of yellow. They have this lovely, ephemeral quality. The color palette is warm, with a saturated cerulean sky that gives a sense of artifice. Nothing here is 'real' in the traditional sense. It is stylized and composed. The red pants of the bathing beauty shimmer like silk, a jewel-like contrast with the blue above. I love how it has been rendered in a way that emphasizes its status as a picture, not an illusion. It reminds me of how Alex Katz used to paint, but with more kitsch and humor. Armstrong's work embraces ambiguity, suggesting that art is an ongoing experiment and the exchange of ideas through time.