Sharon Butler reviews Howard Hodgkin: From Memory at Gagosian Gallery, New York, on view through June 18, 2016.

Butler writes: "[Hodgkin] is a painter I'd always wanted to love, but I had never fully understood or been moved by his chunky brushwork and vivid color. The way he slapped the paint on seemed somewhat random and the compositions formulaic… I’m more open to a casual approach now, and I find more meaning in process. I like Hodgkin’s titles, which inject a sense of narrative into his loose abstractions, as well as the intimate scale, which emphasizes the role of personal circumstance in art. And I love the way he treats his paintings, made on old wooden panels with paint splashing over the framed edges, as objects in themselves."