Untitled 1963

Curator: This work is an Untitled piece by John Ferren, dating to 1963. It employs acrylic paint on, one presumes, canvas or perhaps board. I'm struck by the intensity of the red ground. Editor: Wow, it’s definitely grabbing my eyeballs. Like staring into a really swanky, slightly deranged, fireplace. All that swirling colour… there’s an energy here, isn’t there? Like everything's about to either combust or take flight. Curator: Indeed. Note the dynamism of the lines and how the artist establishes compositional tension between the centralized vortex of colour and the relative calm of the surrounding solid red. This piece seems rooted in Abstract Expressionism. The impasto technique certainly reinforces this, no? Editor: Impasto, huh? All that thick, gloopy paint. Makes me think Ferren was just throwing himself into the act of painting, all instinct and gusto. I wouldn't want to stand in front of him when he's painting! But there's control there too, wouldn’t you agree? All those distinct lines… It's almost as if controlled chaos is at play, dancing. Curator: Controlled chaos seems an apt descriptor. If one considers the broader arc of Ferren’s career, one discerns the tension between automatism and structured composition typical of his practice. There is the formalism but Ferren loosens it for himself with freedom to imply forms without fully defining them. It's there but isn't there. Editor: I think that you can almost glimpse figures there, maybe just wisps of gestures, or like the memory of a dance. Curator: That potentiality is precisely where the painting's affectivity resides; not in what is definitively depicted, but rather what it provokes or permits in the eye of the beholder. Editor: And isn't that part of the magic? Each time you look, you discover some little quirk, some fresh insight. Kind of like a Rorschach test, or staring into the cosmos to chart your personal narrative. I could lose myself here. Curator: It’s an evocative proposition, this painting, a formal exercise yielding to subjective expression. Editor: Yeah, it definitely has a lot to say without using any words. Makes you wonder what John Ferren was listening to in '63 while this marvel materialized!