Green Stance 1984

Warren Rohrer made this painting, Green Stance, with layers of green and blue paint, and I can almost feel him tilting the canvas, coaxing the colors to bleed into one another. Look closely, and you will see tiny marks all over the canvas. I imagine him stepping back, squinting, maybe tilting his head like a curious bird, deciding where to add a touch more blue or deepen the green. Rohrer was interested in the grid, but here the grid is almost dissolved into a hazy atmosphere. It makes me think about Agnes Martin’s subtle grids or even Rothko’s floating color fields. That little flicker of red along the edges—was it intentional or a happy accident? It feels like a secret, a tiny rebellion against the calm, cool surface. Ultimately painting is a conversation across time, painters building on each other’s discoveries, each brushstroke an echo of the past and a whisper to the future.