Bright Earth 2019

Joshua Flint painted Bright Earth with oils, though the exact date and location escape us. It’s a painting where the magic is in the making. There's this push and pull in the paint, a real sense of layering, like he’s building up not just the image, but also the memory of an image. The lower half of the painting is dark, with small figures reaching up towards something we can't quite make out. It's as if we are seeing through their eyes, our vision blurred by anticipation. Above, a riot of pink and red and white circles hover, they could be balloons, planets, or just light. The surface is alive with texture; you can almost feel the drag of the brush. It’s this tension between clarity and abstraction that gets me. It reminds me of Bonnard, who also knew how to make the ordinary glow with an inner light. Ultimately, Bright Earth is less about what we see, and more about how we feel when we’re looking.