The Challenger Explosion 1986

Adam Caldwell made this painting with oils, I imagine, sometime in the 20th century. The palette here is so interesting – moody blues, fleshy pinks, and then, BAM, that cloud of white smoke. I see the artist layering, scraping back, and building up the surface, trying to get at something that feels both deeply personal and universally resonant. I wonder, was he thinking about Bacon when he made this? There's something about the way the figures are rendered, so vulnerable and exposed, that reminds me of Bacon's raw intensity. But then there's this cloud, this symbol of destruction, hovering in the background. It is like two paintings in one. I can almost feel Caldwell's hand moving across the canvas, wrestling with the paint, trying to capture the weight of history and the fragility of the human body. It's messy and unresolved, like a conversation that keeps circling back to the same uncomfortable truths. And isn't that what painting is all about? Exploring the space between what we know and what we can only sense, reaching out to each other across time and space, through the language of paint.