Two Twelves 1973

LeRoy Neiman made this painting, Two Twelves, without giving us a date but with plenty of splashy marks. You can almost feel the spray from the water, can’t you? I’m really struck by how Neiman's captured the dynamism of the scene. It's all in the brushstrokes, each one a little explosion of color and movement. Look closely at the way he layers the blues and turquoises, with those pops of tan and brown for the figures. There’s such a physicality to it, like he's wrestling with the paint to get it just right. See that one big splash of white near the top? It cuts through the composition and really animates the sense of movement. You could almost see a similar approach in some of Joan Mitchell's later, more gestural work, where the paint feels like it's practically leaping off the canvas. Ultimately, art’s not about giving us a single, fixed answer. It’s about sparking something in us and leaving room for our own interpretations.