Weeping Dews 1974

Stanley Boxer created "Weeping Dews" with some kind of brush, maybe even a palette knife. It's slathered in tactile, thick paint, dragging downwards in oozing vertical lines. I'm wondering, was he thinking of Rothko's hazy fields of color or maybe de Kooning’s raw brushwork? Because I see both here. There's this kind of relentless yellow-ness, it has an odd, compelling harmony, like gazing into sunlight filtered through pollen. But it's not quite cheerful, is it? Maybe it's those rivulets of orange and gray peeking through; those subtle accents that give it a melancholic air. Boxer's paintings often explore the boundary between representation and abstraction, and here, the texture itself seems to be the subject. With its insistent physicality, this painting offers a world, not a window. It makes you want to reach out and touch it, to feel the weight of the paint under your fingers, to experience the painting in a very intimate way.