Print 8 1967

Bernard Cohen made this piece, ‘Print 8’ using… well, you tell me? The dominant colour is a kind of pale, chalky, off-white that’s been subtly brushed. The canvas has this lovely, quiet, almost blank quality. Imagine Cohen, maybe he was trying to find a new beginning here, wiping the slate clean! The paint looks thin, like watercolour almost, so it stains the canvas rather than sits on top. The odd little dots of colour near the top are like quiet punctuation marks to the otherwise blank page. What did they mean to Cohen? Are they part of some larger composition? What can we learn from other artists who explore similar ground? The act of painting is like a philosophical investigation, inviting us to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity and find something new. After all, every artist stands on the shoulders of the ones who came before, in an ongoing conversation that stretches across time.