Figure at Barnes Hole 1962

Willem de Kooning made this painting on paper with lush strokes of oil paint. The palette is bright, but also kind of scrubby, like the colours have been pushed around until they’re almost faded. I imagine de Kooning in his studio, maybe pacing back and forth, thinking about the figure, maybe about Barnes Hole itself. Then he makes these marks – slashes of dark green and black that suggest an outline, but also feel like a kind of searching. It's like he's trying to pin down a feeling, a memory, and then letting it slip away again. The red against the green, like a flash of heat. De Kooning was always in conversation with other painters, whether he knew it or not. Think of Arshile Gorky’s biomorphic shapes, or even the way he messes with figuration, recalling Picasso. Painting is like that, an ongoing conversation across time. The image remains open, uncertain. What do you think, is it a figure, a landscape, or something in between?