Dedication to Van Gogh 1946

Forrest Bess made this painting, titled Dedication to Van Gogh, with oil on canvas. The canvas pulses with thick marks of red and black, forming a zig-zag, almost electric field. I can only imagine Forrest Bess as he built the painting up, each stroke a search, maybe even a stutter. It seems that, like Van Gogh, Bess was driven by a desire to express something beyond the surface of things, pushing the paint around to see what could emerge. He must have been asking himself 'What do I see? What do I feel? How can I make this visible?' Bess painted this horizon with a heavy impasto of white and ochre and punched it through with a dark, cosmic circle. I bet Van Gogh, who also wrestled with paint and vision, would have appreciated the gesture. We painters, we're all in this together, wrestling with the same angels, trying to make something out of nothing, and in the process, leaving a trace of our being on the canvas.