Untitled 1977

This small oil on canvas, by Moshe Kupferman, feels like the residue of an action. It looks like it was made with muted colors and decisive gestures. Kupferman seems to be scraping and layering paint, searching for an image. I wonder what he was thinking, or what he wanted to see in the painting? Was it a landscape, an interior, or something else? It feels very intimate, like a notebook entry or a private conversation. There’s a feeling of immediacy, of the artist responding directly to the material, to the canvas. The marks are simple but they carry a lot of feeling. A strong diagonal cuts across the surface, and there are vertical lines and dashes that suggest movement. I am always interested in the way artists create their own language, and how each mark can communicate feeling, intention, or meaning. In that way, artists are in an ongoing conversation across time, inspiring one another’s creativity.