Red Boat 1964

Robert Goodnough made this collage, called ‘Red Boat,’ from cut paper, and I can only imagine him carefully building this little world, bit by bit. The color palette is very simple. Just a few reds, blacks, browns, and tans on a white background, but the shapes themselves are really doing the heavy lifting here. They remind me of Matisse’s late cut-outs, though with less confidence. They feel more provisional, more awkward. Like he’s really thinking about what each shape means in relation to the others, how the sum becomes greater than its parts. I’m always curious about how shapes interact with each other. Goodnough’s boat feels very much like a shared space, a community. It shows that the best art comes out of uncertainty. It's never about having all the answers. We’re all just trying to make sense of things together, one cut-out shape at a time.