Pathetic Still Life 2012

Alexander Roitburd made this oil painting, Pathetic Still Life, at some point in his career. The earthy palette and the way the paint is worked really speaks to me of Roitburd’s belief in the process of painting, in the everyday practice of artmaking, a kind of humble, existential act. If you look closely, the texture is so rich – you can almost feel the weight of the paint on the canvas. It’s neither completely opaque nor thin, it feels like he's trying to get to the heart of the subject through layers and layers of feeling. You can see a similar approach in the way he paints that blue cloth – it’s like a sea of emotions captured in paint. Each stroke feels deliberate, charged with emotion, so that even the most mundane subject seems to be imbued with meaning. Roitburd reminds me a little of Philip Guston, in his later works – that kind of raw, emotional honesty is always going to be more valuable than any kind of technical perfection.