Patrick Caulfield in Italy 1992

Howard Hodgkin made "Patrick Caulfield in Italy" with oil paint, and look at the sheer joy of it! It’s all about the feel of paint, isn’t it? See how the brushstrokes aren't trying to hide anything? They're right there on the surface, thick and juicy. Take that patch of green in the upper left, for instance. It’s dabbed, almost carelessly, but it creates this vibrant, living texture. The way the colours bump up against each other, that deep blue contrasting with the sunny yellow, you can almost feel the warmth of the Italian sun on your skin. It reminds me of early Auerbach, a similar joy in the application of paint as a means in itself. Hodgkin shows us that painting is a conversation, a back-and-forth, with the materials themselves. It's less about what you're painting and more about how you're painting. And isn’t that the fun part?