India, Temples No.1 (Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, Tiruchirapalli) 1954

William Congdon made this painting, India, Temples No.1, with a thick impasto of muted browns and grays, punctuated by strokes of shimmering gold. You can almost feel the weight of the pigment, and it is clear that the artist worked and reworked the surface. I imagine him standing before the canvas, layering paint, scraping it back, and then adding more, searching for some kind of truth, right? The towers loom, not as architectural studies, but as emotional anchors in a sea of abstraction. Those delicate etched lines over the golden towers, man, what a touch. It reminds me of Twombly's scribbles meeting the solemnity of Rothko's color fields. Each mark seems to carry the weight of experience, like a conversation between the seen world and the felt one. In painting, there are no mistakes, just opportunities to find something new.