Houses In Motion 1999

Jennifer Bartlett made "Houses In Motion" with what looks like pure playful process, a real dance of color and form. Look at how she builds up the surface with these tiny, almost pointillist dots. It's like each dot is a little decision, a tiny moment of looking and responding. The colors, too, are so vibrant and unexpected, like pink and purple houses next to an orange sun? Why not! It makes the whole scene feel dreamlike and a bit off-kilter. There's this amazing tension between the flatness of the surface and the illusion of depth, as the eye bounces between these little spots of color. It reminds me a bit of David Hockney's swimming pool paintings, that same sense of capturing a fleeting moment, a feeling more than a literal representation. Bartlett's work, like Hockney's, invites us to see the world with a fresh, almost childlike wonder.