Dominican Boys on 108th Street 1955

Alice Neel made this painting of Dominican boys on 108th Street with oils on canvas, but when exactly is something of a mystery! The paint feels kind of thin and washy. There are visible brushstrokes, like she's sketched the boys out with color. The buildings behind them are all smeary and distorted, like they’re melting into the background, and yet the boys themselves are so present, so real. I wonder what it was like to be Neel, standing on that street corner, trying to capture their essence in paint? There's a tenderness, a sense of empathy in her gaze. Her portraits are so different from the slick, commercial images we're used to seeing, like she’s reaching for something deeper, something more human. Other painters like Fairfield Porter and Alex Katz come to mind; painters who also manage to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. It's like they're all part of a secret club, sharing a language of paint and feeling.