The Two Jamaican Girls 1937

Augustus John made this painting, 'The Two Jamaican Girls', with oil on canvas and a whole lot of looking. He's not trying to hide his process here. The marks are out in the open, thick and juicy. There's something so satisfying about how he builds up the forms with these visible strokes, the paint doing all the work. The way he models their faces is just beautiful. Take the girl in the foreground. Look at how a dab of white on the cheekbone catches the light, but also how he creates depth by layering darker tones underneath the eyes and around the mouth. It's almost like he's sculpting with paint. It makes me think of someone like Alice Neel, who also wasn't afraid to show the raw, messy reality of portraiture, where feeling and form come before neatness. Art is like a conversation that never ends, a back-and-forth between artists and their ideas. It's all about ambiguity, layers, and letting the paint speak for itself.