Flying Circus 1965

The joyful, comic-like painting titled Flying Circus by Nicholas Krushenick is an arrangement of bright swathes of red, blue, and yellow bounded by thick black lines. Imagine the artist, with his graphic sensibility, mapping out these bold compositional forms, filling each one in with blocks of vibrant colour. I’m curious about how Krushenick chose these colours and compositional decisions. Maybe he was trying to capture the exuberance of the circus through his choice of bright, contrasting hues. How the sinuous yellow lines evoke a sense of movement, like performers twisting and turning in the air. These hard-edged forms are not unlike the work of someone like Alex Katz. Krushenick has a Pop Art sensibility, transforming ordinary subject matter into something graphic, iconic, and new. All art is in conversation with itself. It offers a space of imagination for the viewer and the artist.