Gertrude III 1958

Balcomb Greene's Gertrude III is like a stormy thought, rendered with oil paint in a way that feels both turbulent and tender. The cool blues and grays, applied in these thick, gestural strokes, give the portrait an almost sculptural quality. Look at how Greene builds up the face, not with smooth blending, but with chunky dabs of paint. There is something so physical about this process; you can imagine the artist wrestling with the image, pushing and pulling the paint until Gertrude emerges from the abstraction. I’m drawn to the way the eyes are suggested – dark, cavernous hollows that pull you into the depths of the painting, and the unknown. It reminds me of some of Philip Guston’s later works, where figuration dissolves into abstraction and back again. Greene seems to be asking: can a painting capture not just what someone looks like, but how it feels to be with them, or even just to think about them? It's less about perfect representation and more about the messy, beautiful act of trying to see.