Bimini 1972

Walter Darby Bannard made Bimini, a painting that dives right into the joy of process. There’s a real emphasis here on the texture and physicality of the paint itself. The surface of Bimini is a landscape of thick, pale turquoise strokes. It's all about the materiality; you can almost feel the weight and drag of the medium. It looks like Bannard used a palette knife to apply the paint, creating these rhythmic, vertical movements across the canvas. See how the color isn’t uniform? There’s a sort of ochre peeking through in places. It's like he's searching for a balance between control and letting the materials do their thing, which I think is what painting is all about. Bannard's work reminds me a little of Jules Olitski, in the sense that they're both playing with surface and color in ways that are not quite abstract, but definitely not representational. This piece is like a visual poem, an ongoing conversation between the artist, the materials, and us. It's a reminder that art doesn't always need to have a clear answer.