Cantata 1933

Norman Lewis made this painting called Cantata with oil on canvas, and I can imagine him layering thin washes of black, blue, and grey, until these ghostly figures emerged. I want to be inside his head when he made this. What was he thinking as he scratched those white lines? Did they feel like drawing in the dark? The surface has a real luminosity, doesn't it? It’s like he's painting light itself. The white lines create a sense of structure, like scaffolding holding the composition together, and then the little flecks of red that seem to dance across the surface. He’s in conversation with the Abstract Expressionists but charting his own course. Like, he’s whispering secrets that only painting can tell. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do?