Dusk 1958

William Baziotes made *Dusk* with oil on canvas. I imagine Baziotes, brush in hand, building up the painting's surface, coaxing these biomorphic shapes into being. You know, he's part of that Abstract Expressionist generation, hanging out with the likes of Motherwell and Rothko, all trying to figure out how to paint the unsayable. He’s working and reworking the gray ground here, and it looks like he's thinned the paint, letting it stain the canvas. This kind of soak-stain technique flattens the image, which can bring the forms forward to meet you. Look how the shapes float in space, like memories or dreams half-formed. I feel a sense of the surreal looking at his work, as if he’s creating his own personal mythology. And, like any good painter, Baziotes is in dialogue with the history of art, riffing on ideas, pushing them further. We all are, in the studio. It's an ongoing conversation.