Philip Guston, Ocean

Philip Guston, Ocean, 1976, Oil on canvas, 78 x 116.5 in. Image courtesy the San Antonio Museum of Art.

This is a stunning painting to happen upon in the quiet light-soaked galleries of the San Antonio Museum of Art. Expansive and richly colored, looking at it is a very physical experience, as those waves wash over you. It combines the most beautiful aspects of Guston's early and late work--the depth of color (and that magical grey!) and sensitivity of stroke and graphic sensibility and the directness and unsparing honesty and wry tenderness.