Susanna at her Bath 2012

Alexander Roitburd created this painting, Susanna at her Bath, with oil on canvas. The work feels like it has emerged from the red ground. It’s thick and scumbled, like a history of finding and losing the figure. I imagine Roitburd in the studio, coaxing the image out, wiping it back, pushing and pulling until the figures almost rise from the red sea. There is an openness to the way Roitburd handles paint, how the figures are built from fleshy pinks that bleed into the ground. Is the green line a breath? A bridge? An offering? It's interesting to see how Roitburd is in conversation with artists of the past while at the same time speaking very much in the present. Painting is like that, always rooted in the body, reaching towards something new.