Skull Rocks Bones 1994

Susan Rothenberg made this painting with loose brushstrokes and a muted palette, mostly yellows, whites, and mauves. I imagine Rothenberg standing in her studio, circling the canvas, maybe stepping back now and then, tilting her head, wondering what might emerge. The bones, the skull… what are they doing? They are strange forms floating in a bright yellow space. The skull is rendered with thick, almost clumsy strokes, yet it has a weird presence. I see Rothenberg’s mark-making as a kind of conversation, a back-and-forth between intention and accident. She was a painter who looked at the world differently. In her hands, painting becomes a site of inquiry, where forms emerge, dissolve, and re-emerge. Rothenberg, like all painters, was in conversation with the past, with the present, with other artists, sharing ideas, inspiring one another. Painting is an embodied language, always shifting, never fixed.