Portrait of a Bearded Young Man Reading 1972

Beauford Delaney made "Portrait of a Bearded Young Man Reading" with paint, probably oils, and a whole lot of intuition. Look at the way the brushstrokes dance across the canvas, each one a little spark of color and energy. I can imagine Delaney, brush in hand, circling his subject, trying to get to the heart of the matter. Maybe he started with a quick sketch, just to get the lay of the land, and then dove in, layering color upon color, letting the paint do its thing. The green and blue background looks almost like a landscape, but it’s more like a feeling, a mood. You can see the influence of someone like Van Gogh, a painter who also knew how to turn feelings into strokes of color. It's like Delaney is saying, "Here's a person, here's a book, but here's also all the stuff that can't be put into words." That's what painting is, after all – a way of seeing, thinking, and feeling all at once, and a conversation that keeps going, from one artist to the next.