Dancers - Magical Forms 1945

Lorser Feitelson’s painting ‘Dancers - Magical Forms’ features ghostly figures rendered in thin washes of teal and russet oil paint against a shadowy green background. I can imagine Feitelson in the studio, pushing and pulling the paint across the canvas, improvising these attenuated forms, and allowing them to emerge slowly from the murk. The layering of translucent colors creates a sense of depth, as if we're peering into an underwater grotto. I keep thinking about the orange figure stretching across the center of the canvas. It feels languid, elastic, as if suspended in the act of becoming. Feitelson was interested in the subconscious, so maybe he was trying to externalize an interior state – a feeling of yearning, perhaps? Like other painters, Feitelson invites us to join him in a visual conversation that transcends time and space. We bring our own lived experiences to the act of seeing, and the painting breathes anew with each encounter.