Bard 2017

David Michael Hinnebusch made this painting, "Bard", with an almost childlike freedom, using bright colors and a direct, unpolished approach. You get the feeling he wasn't aiming for perfection but was more interested in the sheer act of painting. Looking at it, the colors are laid on thick and fast, almost fighting for space. The paint isn't trying to hide anything. You can see the strokes, the starts and stops, the way the brush was loaded with pigment. Take the figure in the center, it's rendered in a sort of pinkish-white. It seems vulnerable, almost like a sketch. Yet, the colors around it are bold, unapologetic. It reminds me a bit of some of Basquiat’s work, in that it has a raw, unedited quality, like a visual scream. Art is about conversation across time, Hinnebusch seems to say something urgent here, inviting us to participate in the dialogue, to question, to feel, to see beyond the surface.