Revelation 1979

Ronnie Landfield made this painting, Revelation, using what looks like diluted acrylic or maybe even watercolor, to create a horizon of soft colour. There’s a real sense of process at play here, I can almost feel the brushstrokes layering up one on top of the other, building this kind of loose, hazy landscape. It feels like memory to me, or maybe like a dream. The paint is applied in these horizontal bands, each one slightly different in hue and tone. Look at how the colours bleed and blend into each other. This creates a sense of depth and movement, as if the landscape is shifting and changing before our eyes. In the bottom left, there is this wonderful patch of red, this small detail is such a counterpoint to all that yellow, a moment of contrast that really sings out. The work makes me think a little of Helen Frankenthaler’s soak stain paintings, the way she poured thinned paint onto canvas. But Landfield has a distinct style of mark making that feels both controlled and intuitive, something that is also true of Frankenthaler. It feels like he’s in dialogue with art history, while finding his own voice.