Cargo 1957

Milton Resnick made this painting, Cargo, with thick swirls of brown, yellow, and white oil paint. I can only imagine what it must have been like for Resnick to stand before this canvas. He would have been wrestling with how to translate the vastness of human experience into something tangible and visible. Looking at it, I can sense that the act of painting itself became a form of inquiry, a way of grappling with uncertainty and ambiguity. See how the paint is layered so thickly in some areas, almost like a topographical map of emotion. I love the way the strokes are laid down with such physicality, each gesture full of intention. Does it remind you of de Kooning? Or maybe Guston? There is such a fascinating dialogue happening among painters across time, each building upon the ideas and experiments of those who came before. For Resnick, as for so many of us, painting was an embodied practice – a way of thinking through feeling and feeling through thought.