Picture for a Lady 1976

Charles Garabedian made this 'Picture for a Lady' with paint, and maybe some collage, working with earthy browns and blues. I can see him, can’t you? Experimenting with color. The eye travels across the surface, catching on geometric forms that seem suspended in time and space. There's a sort of narrative happening, a world being built out of simple shapes and tones, each stroke and placement is part of a larger, unknown story. It has this real materiality; the surface looks built up, layer upon layer, with visible brushstrokes, each stroke is like a gesture, a movement, frozen in time. This reminds me of Guston, or maybe even de Kooning, those painters who weren't afraid to let their hand be seen. All of them are involved in this long, ongoing conversation about what painting is and what it can do. They inspire each other. It's pretty cool.