Summer 1962

Frank Lobdell made this sunny painting, Summer, with oil on canvas. It’s a wild world of yellows, grounded with blues and greens. The layers of the yellow paint are really something, so that even though it feels bright and summery, it also has an earthy, grounded feeling too. Look at the swirling shapes towards the middle. Are they landscapes? Creatures? I love that Lobdell gives us these dark swirling shapes, like he’s not sure what they are either. There is a real balance in this piece between form and ground, where Lobdell messes with what is solid and what is void. I see some of Lobdell’s peers, like Joan Mitchell in his approach to paint, or even the graphic style of someone like Terry Winters. In the end, it feels uniquely his. Lobdell shows us that abstraction can be a space of constant questioning, a place for the unknown to emerge.