Qāf 1978

This is M.F. Husain's ‘Qāf’, painted with what looks like watercolor and ink, with flat washes and bold outlines. I like to imagine Husain making this, moving around the paper, shifting the image through a lot of trial and error. There's this big, black form that looms large. It's not quite representational, but then there is the figure in yellow and the blue donkey. What was he thinking when he made this? Maybe he wanted to make a painting that looked like a memory, all fragments and flashes of color. I respond to the washes of color, the deep reds and yellows, laid down thinly, letting the paper breathe. You can see how the colors run into each other, creating soft edges and blurry forms. The ink outlines are more decisive, giving the painting a graphic quality, a bold statement. It reminds me that artists are always in conversation, borrowing and riffing off of each other's ideas. Paintings are always ambiguous, offering up multiple meanings.