Utopia Study #16 1975

Benny Andrews made this Utopia Study in watercolour, and what gets me right away is how he’s used the thin washes to build the image gradually. The yellow in the birds’ wings, for example, it’s like a whisper of color, just enough to suggest form without being heavy-handed. And that’s a clue to how he’s thinking about Utopia. It’s not a fixed place, but something emerging, in process. Look at the blue of the water – how it bleeds and blurs into the white of the paper. He lets the medium do its thing. There’s a humility in that, like he’s not trying to control everything, but letting the paint lead him. It makes me think of Arthur Dove, another artist who wasn’t afraid to let a painting breathe. Ultimately it feels like the suggestion of a world, one that is always on the horizon.