In Blue Danube Blues, David Aylsworth orchestrates a syncopated rhythm of form and color, translating the musicality of his title into a bold visual cadence. Unlike the vertical tension of his other works from this period, this composition is driven by a series of heavy, erratic black lobes that seem to tumble and dance across the canvas, interrupting the structured background grid of cream, rust, and pale blue. These hovering, dark silhouettes recall the organic weight of Arthur Dove or the late cut-outs of Matisse, yet they are rendered with Aylsworth’s signature "controlled informality"—rough edges and thick, confident impasto that celebrate the physical act of painting. The juxtaposition of the serene, waltz-like blue against the jarring, staccato black shapes creates a playful dissonance, embodying the artist's philosophy that a painting is an "expression of a felt thought." As a key figure in the Texas abstract movement with works in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Dallas Museum of Art, Aylsworth here demonstrates his mastery of improvisational abstraction, offering a work that is at once heavy and buoyant, melancholic and lively. Signed on verso.
