Untitled Possibly 1946

Judith Rothschild's 'Untitled', made with paint on board, is a fascinating exploration of shapes and colours. It looks to me like she is building the work with simple forms, seeing what she can make with a few clear, flat colours, a black outline, and some flat planes. I really like the tension between the very particular colours – that sort of fleshy pink, the olive green – and how they make a whole with the cooler greys and blues. It's almost as if she's saying, "Let's see how far we can push this." Note the curious blue hatching on the right side. It is almost like a cross-section of a form, revealing the inside through a graphic device. It reminds me a little of some of Stuart Davis's paintings, in the way it confidently walks a line between abstraction and representation. But I think Rothschild does something unique, inviting us to appreciate the many possibilities inherent in paint itself, embracing the beautiful ambiguity of the medium.