Two Figures and Sea 1962

William Brice made this intriguing lithograph, Two Figures and Sea, using a black crayon on a stone. The artist seems to be building up the bodies of these figures, bit by bit, from the shadowy ground. You can imagine him going back again and again, adding density and weight. I can sympathize with that kind of searching, trying to materialize something from nothing. Look how the figures are suspended, almost weightless, their bodies distorted. It's like they're floating in the sea, lost in thought. I love how the lack of color forces us to focus on the textures and forms. It reminds me a bit of Goya’s darker prints, or even some of Guston's later work. Painters are always in dialogue, aren’t they? Reaching across time, borrowing and building on each other's ideas. I think there's something deeply human in that exchange, in the way we keep circling back to the same questions, trying to make sense of the world through the act of making.