Untitled 2014

Jenny Saville made this Untitled piece using charcoal and pastel, and you can see the drawing underneath all the smudgy colour. It gives me the impression she worked fast and intuitively. The blending of pastels into the charcoal feels like a dance between control and letting go, almost like a conversation between the marks, the texture of the paper and the weight of her hand. Notice the maroon and the blue on either side. They bring a touch of the unexpected, a chromatic tension. It's this kind of colour that changes how you read the whole piece. Saville's work reminds me a bit of Willem de Kooning, that sense of searching, adding, and subtracting, a commitment to the messy, unresolved process. There's no right or wrong way to see this piece, it embraces ambiguity and is a reminder that art thrives on this kind of conversation.