Industrial Building 1936

Franklin Carmichael's "Industrial Building" is a landscape built from loose brushstrokes, a patchwork of greens, blues, and earth tones. I can imagine Carmichael standing before this scene, squinting at the light as he mixes his colors. The industrial structure is built up from layers of dark pigment. The structure is not static, but like a breathing thing. The paint seems both heavy and light, defining volume and form. I know how he feels. There is a way to make a painting work. Carmichael's paintings always strike me as a kind of quest, not just to capture a scene, but to find something deeper within it. A place where the material world meets the realm of feeling. He’s in dialogue with the industrial scene, just as painters have always responded to the world around them, turning observation into feeling, and feeling into form.