Two Bathers 1960

Elmer Bischoff painted ‘Two Bathers’ with oil on canvas, and you can almost feel the thick, buttery strokes he laid down. There’s a real push and pull here between representation and abstraction. I imagine Bischoff outside, maybe in Northern California, wrestling with the paint to capture something fleeting, like the way light hits the body or the mood of the landscape. What does it feel like to be in nature? Look at how he’s used that dark blue in the sky, almost violent slashes, versus the softer greens and yellows of the grass. It's not just a picture of two people by the sea; it’s about the act of seeing, the struggle to make sense of the world through paint. It’s like he’s saying, "Here, I’m not sure what this is either, but isn’t it beautiful, this messy, uncertain way of looking?"