Untitled c. 1960

This untitled painting by Edwin Georgi, uses soft colours and gentle brushstrokes to create the portrait of a woman. There’s a delicacy in the rendering, like watercolor but I think it is oil. The way the colors blend, like a soft focus lens. The mark making is not about edges or definition, but more about suggestion and atmosphere. The fluffy texture around the shoulders, kind of feathered, in these hazy pastel tones, is so good, like a dream of beauty and desire, rather than an actual real thing. It reminds me of some of the paintings by Fairfield Porter, in the way the artist is finding a way to create form through an accumulation of light and color, even though their subjects are so different. Art is always about more than one thing. It’s a conversation with the past, and a question for the future.