Untitled 1981

This untitled painting by Sam Francis is full of splatters, stains, and puddles of color. I can just imagine him bending over the canvas, letting the paint drip, coaxing it with a brush, wiping it away… all those happy accidents. There's a lot of white space, which almost feels like the painting's breathing room. Big globs of yellow, red and blue create a sense of depth and movement, like a jazz record where each note builds on the last. It makes me think about Helen Frankenthaler and the way she poured paint onto the canvas, or even Joan Mitchell’s colorful landscapes. That big yellow circle is like a sun, shining and bright. It’s grounded, but somehow still floating with the rest of the painting. You know, painters are always looking at each other's work. It's one big conversation across time, which inspires me to get in the studio! And isn't it great that painting is such an open ended medium with so many possibilities for making marks and meaning?