Watermelons 1977

Rufino Tamayo made "Watermelons" with paint and probably a brush, maybe even a palette knife, to carve out the shapes. I can see him building up the layers, pushing and pulling the paint across the surface. The colour! It's all in the reds—from the deep, dark shades to the bright, almost glowing hues—it feels like a hot summer day. The textures look rough and grainy. Tamayo might have been thinking about how colors interact, how a little bit of black or gray can change everything. Those melon shapes are reduced to these simple forms, floating in this ambiguous space. It reminds me of other painters who were playing with abstraction. I bet Tamayo was inspired by the work of his peers, and in turn, inspired so many of us. It's like we’re all having this ongoing conversation through our art, a timeless exchange of ideas. Painting really is an embodied expression, a dance between intention and accident, where meaning is never fixed.