Untitled (SFP94-79, SFF.1755) 1994

Sam Francis made this untitled painting sometime before he died in 1994, and seeing all those gorgeous splatters of red, yellow, and blue, I wonder what it felt like to make this. Did he fling the paint? Dribble it? Or did he carefully place each blob? Looking at it now, I think Francis was searching. I get the sense he knew exactly how to make this painting, but he was trying to get at something else, maybe something he couldn't quite articulate. Like me in the studio, maybe he felt the painting lead the way. And those gestures! That swoosh of yellow paint in the center, how it drips and dances across the surface, it's like a signature, a moment captured in time. There's a joy in this piece, a real love of the paint. Francis really got to know colour and it comes through in this work. When I see work like this, it reminds me we are all connected. We're all just trying to figure things out, one brushstroke at a time.