The Last 2021

Owen Gent made this image, The Last, sometime in the 20th century, and it feels both ancient and futuristic at the same time. It makes me think about painting as a site of inquiry. See how the landscape emerges through washes of color? Deep blues and pale reds. Imagine Gent pushing the paint around the canvas, searching, finding. I wonder what he was thinking about when he made this. The title, The Last, makes me think about endings. The figure is a dark silhouette against a strangely lit shoreline; there's a sense of isolation. And then there's that mysterious light in the distance, like a beacon or a warning. Gent's work has a pared-down quality, but it also makes me think of other figurative painters, like Milton Avery, who captured so much with so little. Artists are always having a conversation, and each painting adds a new voice. Painting embraces ambiguity and uncertainty; there's so much room for us to bring our own experiences to it.