Woodstock c. 1970

This black and white artwork, titled "Woodstock," is a large rendering of a very large crowd of people. I'm seeing the overall image emerge, shift, and come into being through repetition. I can feel the artist's intense focus, the hand holding steady, and the mind, working away. It's like the artist is trying to capture the essence of a moment, to distil the image of a crowd into a singular entity. I start to wonder if the artist was at Woodstock. Maybe they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of people and wanted to translate this feeling onto canvas. Maybe they were simply trying to understand the collective experience of being part of a crowd. The texture and surface are really speaking to me; the grainy, almost pixilated effect adds to the sense of a moment captured, a memory recalled. This artist has tapped into something primal and universal. I am reminded that artists are always talking to each other across time, inspiring one another’s creativity.