Erythea 1971

Norman Bluhm made this painting, Erythea, with big, bold brushstrokes and a moody palette of blacks, reds, and whites. You can almost feel him moving around the canvas, wrestling with those colours, trying to get them just right. I can imagine him, maybe a little frustrated, but also excited, as the painting started to come together, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. I bet Bluhm was thinking about his heroes like Joan Mitchell and Franz Kline, wondering how they would handle the challenge. The paint looks pretty thin in places, kind of scrubbed into the canvas, giving the surface a raw, immediate feel. That red slash across the middle? It’s like a jolt of energy, disrupting the calmer whites and blacks, insisting on your attention. It’s so cool how artists are always in conversation with each other, across time, inspiring each other’s creativity. Painting is a form of embodied expression, after all. There is ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meaning over fixed or definitive readings.