Metaphysical Figures, Sansepolcro 2011

William Balthazar Rose made this painting, "Metaphysical Figures, Sansepolcro", using a somber palette of browns, grays, and blues that kind of sucks you into its gravity. Looking at it, I imagine Rose layering on the paint, building these flattened figures out of geometric blocks. I picture him stepping back, squinting, turning the canvas, maybe even wiping away sections to start again, searching for that elusive balance between representation and pure form. He seems to be playing with the architecture of pictorial space, pushing the foreground and background together, creating a disorienting sense of depth. The figures themselves, with their mask-like faces, seem like characters in a play, caught in some kind of symbolic drama. There's something about the stillness and formality of it that reminds me of early modernists like Picasso or Braque, who were also wrestling with how to represent the world in new ways. Rose invites us to slow down and consider how we construct meaning through images. It is this conversation across time that makes painting so alive.