The first time I really understood the appeal of making a figurative painting, I was at Joan Semmel’s exhibition at Alexander Gray Associates last winter. In each of the nine works, Semmel had painted her own nude body from photographs. Despite this significant constraint of subject, each picture was radically different from the next: By changing her color palette, perspective, and brushstrokes, Semmel turned the body into a site of infinite reinvention.
One canvas in particular, titled “Turning” (2018), caught my eye. Semmel had painted the central figure turning away from the viewer, her right thigh propped on a stool and her blurred face mostly cropped out of the frame. As she torques at the waist, the subject grips the seat with her right hand.
An electric green line zings from her pinky to her elbow, which resembles a cross section of a tree trunk or a small pond rippling with swirls of peach, yellow, and cobalt at the shaded edge. That green line – so surprising and somehow just right – gave me a jolt. What fun, I thought, to paint the skin of an arm.
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