Witness V 1992

Basil Beattie made this painting, Witness V, with oil on canvas. The brushstrokes seem to have landed with force, building up a surface that’s both solid and unstable. The colors are muted – grays and tans – but the painting isn't dull. Look at the architectural form, it feels like a ruin, maybe a monument. It’s easy to imagine Beattie wrestling with the paint, pushing it around the canvas until it reluctantly yields an image. The painting is about this struggle to make form out of chaos. Then check out the top of the structure, and the way Beattie has rendered this area. The marks there are loose, almost scribbled, conveying a sense of incompleteness. The whole thing has a searching quality to it. Like a Cy Twombly, but with the weight of history bearing down on it. It's a conversation between artists, across time and space, always looking for something new.