Congo 1954

William Baziotes conjured this painting, Congo, with oil on canvas, and what strikes me is its quietness. It’s like peering into an underwater dream. The colors—muted blues, greens, and yellows—feel both organic and otherworldly. I imagine Baziotes, brush in hand, coaxing these shapes into being. He might have started with the snake-like form at the top, letting it writhe and twist across the canvas. The more I look, the more I see a landscape—maybe a river winding through a strange, luminous forest. And that spiral shape? Is that a portal, a whirlpool, a hidden world within a world? Baziotes was part of the Abstract Expressionist scene, but his work always had this gentle, almost surreal quality. It's as if he was tuning into the same frequency as his peers like Gorky and Motherwell, yet tuning it to his own, very particular wavelength. Painters are always talking to each other, even across time. Each brushstroke is a response, a question, an invitation to see things differently. And in Congo, Baziotes invites us to dive deep into the unknown, to embrace the mystery, and to find our own way through the looking glass.