Spots 1967

Forrest Bess made "Spots" with what looks like house paint on canvas, but who knows? It's filled with these rhythmic daubs of red and blue, like confetti frozen in mid-air, and then these grey bands of color, like a low-rise building or a landscape. And way up high, there’s a white circle hovering. I can imagine Bess in his shack on the Gulf Coast, wrestling with paint, trying to nail down something that was just beyond reach. Maybe he laid in those grey horizontal marks, and then countered with these bright colors. There's something so immediate about the making— the texture of the paint, the way the colors sit next to each other, like a conversation. It’s like he's channeling something primal through the simple act of painting. It reminds me a bit of Hilma af Klint, with a similar interest in mystical imagery and an urge to make visible the invisible. These painters, they're all talking to each other across time, whispering secrets through the language of paint.