the wonderfully curated show at the Tate show us the three Philip Guston, the classically educated mural and figurative artist, the popular abstract expressionist of 1950’s and 60’s, and he extraordinary unclassifiable Guston of the last ten years of his life with his large cartoon like collection of recurring images, legs, shoes, horizons, all painted in shades of his favourite cadmium red

if this be not I. a beautiful painting of exhausted children in post war /post party detritus, shows Guston’s skills as a figurative artist, after years painting monumental murals in Mexico and US schools Guston turned to canvas for this powerful painting.

Guston followed his contemporaries into the world of abstract expressionism, where his expressive brush strokes and use of colour made him very succesful in the art world of New York in the 60s and 70s.

slowly his colours faded, became monochromatic until he started slowly thought simple line drawings

he returned to figurative painting, not in his classical style but in a loose simple line, in many of his new drawing he uses a set of repeated images, feet, shoes, hands grasping cigars, horizons, controversially he uses hooded KKK figures in comic settings, Guston appears himself as a large bullet headed cyclops, all apinted mainly in shades of his favourite Cadmium Red

He describes his painting as almost automatic, driven by the unconscious nudged by day to day preoccupations. He described artistic creation ..” I think it’s kind of like devils work… Only God can make a tree”

In describing his working…” when you start working, everybody is in your studio- the past, your friends, enemies, the art world and above all your own ideas…. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone, then if you are lucky, even you leave”…

of the three Gustons, I know which one I prefer, though I love all three