Migration 2016

Joshua Flint made this painting called ‘Migration’ and when you look at it, you can see the color’s been scrubbed in, pushed around. It feels like the artist is trying to find the image, or maybe trying to lose it. You can see the two figures beneath the boat and I think what interests me most, is the tenderness of those bodies together and the strange melancholic feeling it has. It has a dreamlike quality. The edges are blurred, the forms are soft, and I think the texture of the paint adds to that sense of something half-remembered. I see a kinship with other painters here, maybe Gerhard Richter, who also plays with blurring and figuration. I like to think artists are in an ongoing conversation, batting ideas back and forth, inspiring each other across time. And painting itself—it’s a form of expression that embraces ambiguity, and I think that’s what makes it so compelling.