Jade Buddha 23.07.08 2008

John Hoyland made "Jade Buddha 23.07.08", on that date, with paint, obviously, and probably a brush or two. Look at how the colours are built up on the canvas, those deep greens and blues creating a kind of cosmic soup. It really demonstrates how painting is just as much about the doing as the seeing. What I love about this piece is the texture; you can almost feel the thickness of the paint, especially in that bold, bright circle. It’s like Hoyland was wrestling with the medium, pushing it around, letting it drip and splatter. See how that blue outline splays out like a shattered halo? It’s controlled, but wild, a gesture that pulls the whole piece together. And those little pops of orange and yellow—they’re like tiny explosions of joy. Hoyland was a master of colour, like, say, Howard Hodgkin, and his work is always about the push and pull of different hues and tones.