Girl Reclining 1960

Elmer Bischoff, in *Girl Reclining*, paints with an immediacy that invites us into his process. He is not making work, he is in the process of working. The surface is alive! Check out the fleshy strokes of paint – yellows, blues, and pinks – that build up the figure and the space. It’s like Bischoff is wrestling with the image, pushing and pulling the paint until it finds its own form. See how the girl's leg is rendered with these fluid, almost watery strokes? It's both there and not there, solid and dissolving at the same time. It captures the fleeting nature of a moment, the way a memory can be both vivid and elusive. Bischoff reminds me of Milton Avery, both of them finding profound beauty in the everyday, turning simple scenes into shimmering fields of color and light. And like Avery, Bischoff shows us that painting isn't about capturing a fixed reality, but about embracing the messy, imperfect, and ever-changing nature of perception.