HJN. Oil on canvas. (Possibly over-painting an earlier effort.)

This painting has some slight appeal for me. Maybe it’s better called a sketch, and its appeal is in its very sketchiness. It’s flat; there’s no hint of color perspective. The figures are suggested crudely. The paint is slathered on in cool, earthy tones, scumbled, bleeding, glazed, overlapping, messy maybe but not tentative. The slapdash feel suggests someone in command enough of his material not to sweat the details

The date on the picture is ‘07, which puts it late in his career. He was an octogenarian by then, but with steady eyesight. According to my mother, he said to her once, “After all this time I still don’t know how to paint!”

(c) 2019 JMN