Portrait of a Young Musician 1970

Beauford Delaney painted this portrait of a young musician in his signature colours of bright yellow and green. The painting feels like it has come into being from a feeling, shifting and emerging through trial, error and intuition. I really feel for Delaney here, imagining him with his brush, those greens and yellows mixing, pushing, and pulling. What might he have been thinking as he captured this young man’s essence on canvas? The paint is applied with such physicality. Look at the gestures and the way each brushstroke communicates something, some feeling. Delaney really lets the yellow shine! It’s a colour he became known for – a way of seeing, thinking and experiencing the world which places him in an ongoing conversation with painters like Van Gogh and many others. Painting becomes a form of expression which welcomes ambiguity and uncertainty and allows multiple interpretations.