Thamyris 1972

Norman Bluhm made "Thamyris" with big, confident strokes, layering creamy whites, blacks, and a dreamy lilac. I can almost feel the sweep of his arm across the canvas. What was he thinking, wrestling with form and feeling? It's like he’s building a world, or maybe a body, from the ground up. I see this lavender form, and it feels like a landscape, or maybe it's a reclining figure? The drip marks, oh!—they’re like tears or maybe sweat. You know, painters like Bluhm, they're not just slapping paint around. They're in this ongoing conversation with each other, with de Kooning and Kline maybe, but also with us. It’s like they’re asking, how can paint show us something we didn’t know was there? How can it make us feel things we can’t name? It’s all about the push and pull, the doubt, the "what if?" of making.