The Embrace 1975

In Charles Blackman's *The Embrace,* an unknown year, you see these figures held together with a flurry of brushstrokes and muted colours. I imagine Blackman starting with the background – that hectic white, almost like a snowstorm blurring the edges. Then, he pulls these two figures out of the chaos, wrapping them in this blue, melancholic embrace. The paint's applied pretty thinly, allowing the forms to emerge subtly. I can imagine him thinking about the weight of a relationship, the push and pull. How do you capture that feeling of being so close to someone, yet still feeling this distance? The red and yellow of the woman’s hair feels electric, alive, against the black of the male figure and the blue of their clothing. It reminds me a bit of Paula Modersohn-Becker, how she used color to evoke emotional states. Artists keep having these conversations through the years, don't they? Always riffing off each other, trying to pin down the messy, beautiful, confusing thing that is being human. And with painting, we're not pinning anything down. We're just asking questions, letting the ambiguity linger.