Flying Circus 1965

Nicholas Krushenick made this painting, Flying Circus, with acrylic paint and bold black outlines. Looking at this piece, I'm really drawn to the way he's used color. It’s so direct, almost confrontational. The blue, yellow, and red really vibrate against each other, thanks to those black outlines. The acrylic paint is super flat, which means there’s no real texture. It's like the color is just sitting right there on the surface, doing its thing. There's something about the way those wavy yellow lines are organized against the blue that makes me think of a circus tent flapping in the wind, or maybe even abstract waves at the beach. Krushenick's work shares that kind of '60s pop sensibility with someone like Peter Saul, but there's also something else going on here that feels really graphic and modern, even now. Art's like that, a big conversation across time. It's always open to interpretation, and that's what makes it so interesting.