Frank Lobdell. Shapes Hovering in Paint

Frank Lobdell, February 1963, 1963. Oil on canvas, 61 1/4 x 69 3/4 inches.

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Frank Lobdell’s amorphous shapes seem compelled into action, circling in orbit or skimming along a diagonal, as in the painting February 1963 (1963). A vague womb- or podlike body inscribed with heavy black lines sweeps upward amid a field of yellow—the artist’s forms seem suspended in paint, as art critic Thomas Albright described, “as though they were hovering within, gliding through or struggling for release from some sort of engulfing amniotic fluid.”¹ Such movement amid the artist’s thick surfaces alludes to genesis and emergence and the sense of expansion through boundaries into the unknown, a prevalent theme in Lobdell’s work.