Untitled 1946

James Brooks made this untitled painting with fluid brushstrokes and a muted palette. It's cool, moody, and atmospheric. I imagine Brooks pushing paint around, maybe using rags or palette knives to smudge and blend colors. You can see little hints of form, figures emerging from a haze, which feels like the painting is trying to tell a story, but one that's just out of reach. The texture is soft. The colors bleed into each other, like watercolors mingling on wet paper. That one gesture on the right, where a hand seems to reach out—is he trying to pull something from the darkness? It's like Brooks is in conversation with other painters who are also interested in exploring the boundaries of abstraction. It's a painting that invites us to bring our own associations and experiences to the canvas, where meaning is always in flux.