A Rooftop in Tribeca 2010

David Michael Hinnebusch made this painting, "A Rooftop in Tribeca" with visible gestural marks, and a palette that feels like muted city tones meeting flesh tones—grays, blues, creams, and the occasional pop of red. I imagine Hinnebusch attacking this canvas, layering figures and symbols with an urgency that borders on chaos. It’s like he’s wrestling with his own vision, trying to pin down fleeting thoughts and half-formed memories. The paint looks thin in places, almost washed out, then thick and sculptural elsewhere, as if he’s alternating between erasure and emphasis. That fish at the bottom – is it a symbol? A dream? It feels so raw, so exposed, like a confession. And those figures looming in the background, barely there yet undeniably present, could they be ghosts of past paintings, lingering in his artistic subconscious? Hinnebusch's work reminds me of other painters who embraced the messy, the unresolved—Twombly, maybe, or even Guston in his later years. It’s like they’re all in conversation across time, inspiring each other to keep pushing, keep questioning, keep making marks that defy easy answers. Painting, after all, is an embodied expression, which embraces ambiguity.