Merrygandering 1968

James Brooks made 'Merrygandering' sometime in the mid-twentieth century, using oil on canvas, and the process feels almost like a dance. There's a real physicality here, in the way the paint is dragged and layered. Look at the big black form on the upper left, how it bleeds into the white, almost like ink spreading on wet paper. Then there's that swipe of blue – so direct, so confident, but it's all balanced with these delicate, almost hesitant marks. It’s this combination of control and abandon that gets me going. I love the way that a small fleck of red animates the top left corner, and how the linear marks seem to anchor the composition. For me, 'Merrygandering' has a connection to de Kooning's work from the same period, but it’s also very much James Brooks' own thing. The joy of art is that we can all have a conversation with the past and make something totally new.