Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) by Reuben Gelley Newman David Hockney, 1972 1. All beiges, tans & teals. Concrete & tile. Tabula rasa of chlorine & cool, where the bigger boys, all blond & toned, strode through the pool in swooping crawls, where my limbs twinged tight, lungs gulped, gasped, always hunched, scrawny, never spontaneous, never the splash or spring, synergy of arm & leg, that butterfly spin, that caught breath, that good tired—years of lessons as a kid & still I can’t tread water. Now I float on my back, a starfish puffing its chest, squinting at the sun. Like that, my mind works in the water, thoughts dulled & spinning to the edge of the pool, my finger almost touching the cool & solid wall. 2. Now the Hockney spans before me: canvas rippling beyond the museum walls. Those SoCal hills I know so well. The water before it: always the water. Where light tricks itself into revealing more than it should: the boy’s unfounded innocence or the painter’s unfocused gaze, flowing outside the bounds of the swimming pool in a greedy detail we delight in, luster of porcelain tile shadowed by the standing figure, an artist looking everywhere & nowhere, framed in the landscape, distant blues whose mountains, eucalyptus languor whose green & bitter scent brings me to this second home, holding my breath against the crystalline acrylic.
Beautiful.