Two Figures and Sea 1962

William Brice made this lithograph of two figures and sea, and what strikes me is the contrast between the figures and the ground, how the dark and light creates tension. The forms feel like they’re emerging from the ground. Brice's process feels intuitive, like he's letting the forms find their way out of the darkness. The texture is really interesting; you can see the graininess of the lithographic stone, and that adds to the sense of emergence, like the figures are literally being unearthed. Look at the way the limbs are rendered, they’re almost abstract, but still undeniably human. It reminds me of some of Philip Guston’s later work, where he’s playing with figuration and abstraction at the same time. It’s this push and pull between what we recognize and what we don’t that makes the piece so compelling. Ultimately, Brice invites us to see the world not as a fixed reality, but as an ever-evolving process.