Summer Night's Bliss 1961

Hans Hofmann made *Summer Night's Bliss* with big, bold moves, pushing paint around like he was wrestling with the canvas itself. I imagine him in his studio, lost in the act of painting, adding and subtracting, a dance of color and texture. Look at those juicy reds and deep blacks, punctuated by flashes of yellow and white. It's like he's conjuring up the feeling of a summer night, not just depicting it. There's a real physicality to the paint, thick in some places, thin in others, creating a surface that's alive and breathing. The gestures are so expressive. The way he flicks the brush, the way he drags it across the canvas. Hofmann was part of a whole gang of artists who were pushing painting in new directions, figuring out how to make marks that weren't just about representing things, but about expressing feelings and ideas. These artists are in an ongoing conversation, inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting’s a form of embodied expression, it embraces ambiguity. There are multiple interpretations and meanings, never fixed readings.