The Trucks c. 1965

Thomas Seawell made this painting, "The Trucks," with what looks like oil paint or maybe acrylics, who knows?! I can imagine him building up the layers, scraping back, maybe even wiping away, as he's trying to nail the feeling of these hulking vehicles. There’s a kind of darkness and a sense of looming presence here. I’m getting the feeling that he sees something beautiful in these big, hard-working machines. I love the slightly tilted perspective – it's disorienting. Like he's capturing a fleeting moment. Seawell’s got this great thing going on where the trucks almost become abstract shapes. The textures he’s creating with the paint are so important. Take the way he’s daubed on the paint for the headlights on the left truck, little blobs of white that give the impression of light. It reminds me a bit of Fairfield Porter’s paintings of everyday life, finding poetry in the mundane. All painters are in conversation, borrowing, stealing, and transforming what came before. And that’s how art keeps moving, right? Each artist building on the last, adding their own weird, beautiful layer to the conversation.