William Walton 1967

Alice Neel made this oil on canvas painting of William Walton in 1969, and boy, does it feel like a slice of that time. Look at those blues, those fleshy pinks fighting with the cool background. I can imagine her, brush in hand, circling her subject, trying to nail down not just what he looks like, but who he *is*. There's something so gutsy about Neel's portraits, isn't there? The way she doesn't shy away from the awkward angles, the little imperfections. The paint is scrubbed in, almost raw in places. I wonder what they talked about, sitting there in her studio. Did he fidget? Did she make him laugh? You can feel the energy of their encounter, that push and pull between artist and sitter. There's a lineage here, from someone like Van Gogh, but she's doing her own thing, always. It's like she's saying, "Here we are, in all our messy, human glory." And that's a conversation I want to be a part of.