Pale Goddess 1978

Ronnie Landfield made *Pale Goddess* with thin washes of pink and peach. I can almost feel the canvas, lying flat, as Landfield pours and coaxes these hues across the surface. He’s making these soft, cloud-like shapes, stained and diaphanous. It's not quite a landscape, not quite abstract, but hovering somewhere in between. There's this horizontal band of pink at the bottom which functions a bit like a horizon line, or maybe a stage. It holds the composition in place, keeps the goddess from floating away. Landfield, like many painters of his generation, was in dialogue with the Abstract Expressionists, but he's doing something different here. There's a delicacy, a quietness. It feels intimate, like a secret whispered in paint.