Described by Jacques Lacan as ‘giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it.’, by Honoré de Balzac as, well, much the same, as the source of struggle by Amy Winehouse, of life by Mahatma Ghandi, and of poetry by Plato, ‘Love’ is quite a remarkably enrapturing thing…
It is also remarkable that Dan Coombs should address it in his ongoing series of Couples Paintings, presented here in Figure of 8 by FreddieFoulkes (so called because the numeral, turned sideways, resembles the infinity symbol or ‘lemniscate’: a symbol representative not only of infinity, but of immortality, continuity, and eternal return).
Whether selfless, selfish, enduring, playful, or obsessive (if not many other things besides), the Love described by Dan Coombs in each of these paintings is described in two parts. The first is frank and direct:
A couple has been painted, in most cases entwined, arms around one another, holding, hugging, centrally and frontally. Here, the paint has been carefully applied, capturing likenesses and articulating form in full three-dimensionality (source material is varied but includes both vintage and contemporary photographs). An embrace, a kiss, a cuddle, a hand on the chest and another round the waist: these are unmistakable hallmarks of affection (it can be taken for granted that f***king is another).
The second part of its description is cryptic and inconclusive:
These paintings are activated by gesture; paint has been pushed, scraped, and swiped across the canvas. A brush feathers its paint diagonally down the work’s surface, a palette knife does away with half of it, and paint applied directly from the tube reinstates but a missing quarter, at most a third. It is a trade off in painting: a trade off between a clarity of form and a clarity of impression. In this exchange each Couple’s powerful intimacies, however complex, are unveiled; what Dan Coombs is here painting are surprisingly real Couples that only fate could have made.
To date, this body encompasses twenty paintings, seventeen of which are portrait in format and three of which are landscape. They were painted in 2025 using oil paint and canvas and all measure 60 x 45 cm / 24 x 17 3/4 in.
