Elusive Man with Beard, Mid-Century Oil Painting pottery bowls running forever in place

running forever in place

25 1/2" x 20 1/2"

and though missing the lid of its box

The shorter has a hairline crack on the underside of the base

Elusive Man with Beard, Mid-Century Oil Painting pottery bowls running forever in placeTo me, there is something so right about this elusive portrait, painted by an artist unknown to me, but which I know dates to the 1960s or so. Thinly painted on what I believe is an unprimed linen panel board, it seems to me both about the materiality and constructed illusory nature of painting itself and also about the subject himself, doubly veiled in a sense by the painter's treatment, and by his great beard! Hovering in a sort of liminal space, it