Nipple Ring 2017

David Michael Hinnebusch made this piece, "Nipple Ring," with what looks like mixed media on paper, and he's not afraid of a little mess. The colors here are bold and juicy: reds, oranges, blues, all colliding like thoughts in your head when you're trying to make sense of something. There’s a real push and pull between abstraction and figuration. You can almost make out a body, maybe, or is it just a feeling of a body? Look how the reds bleed into the blues, creating these hazy edges. It’s like Hinnebusch is inviting us into his process, showing us the messy, beautiful struggle of trying to capture something real. That little white ring on the left, the nipple ring itself, feels almost like an afterthought, a tiny detail in a much larger emotional landscape. It's like Guston’s late work, all raw feeling and unapologetic honesty. Art isn’t about answers, it's about the questions.