The Bush 1955

John Ferren made this painting, 'The Bush,' with oil on canvas, and he really went to town with the brushstrokes and color. I can almost feel the painting coming into being, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. The color palette is all muted and pastel, with delicate greens, reds and yellows floating across the composition. It's a bit like a floral still life, a bit abstract, and it has these elegant bare branches that look as if they've been quickly drawn. He's got this kind of push-and-pull thing going on where you can’t quite work out where things are in space, which I like a lot. The material aspects of the painting, like the texture and the surface, really shape our experience of the painting and contribute to its emotional resonance. Painting is an embodied expression which embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations. Ultimately, artists are in an ongoing conversation across time, always inspiring one another’s creativity.