e.f.w (t.l.o.), 2017

Miami Beach 2017
e.f.w (t.l.o.)

Jessica Silverman

Painting
Oil on linen
99.1 x 81.3 (cm)
39.0 x 32.0 (inch)
Dashiell Manley’s zen “E” paintings contain two kinds of brushstroke: a short, rhythmic, repetitive stroke, which relates to a mindful focus on the process of painting itself; and occasional drifting transgressive lines, which signal and attempt to correct moments of distraction. The “E” originally stood for “elegy,” a poem that laments the dead, and a title often used by one of Manley’s favorite painters, the Postwar Abstract Expressionist, Robert Motherwell. But, as their living-and-breathing brushstrokes suggest, these paintings memorialize the vibrancy of emotional abstraction.