Untitled 1946

Leon Polk Smith made this Untitled painting using paint on paper, and what strikes me is the rhythm of the rectangle. It's like a dance, or a really catchy tune that gets stuck in your head. The colors here are not messing around – the red and orange pop, but it’s the gray that holds everything together. The surface looks like it has been scrubbed, not unlike my own paintings. You can almost feel the texture of the paper underneath the paint. It's not about hiding the process but revelling in it. Look at the places where the black squares touch the red bars, there is this slight unevenness that reveals the movement of the artist's hand. Smith reminds me a bit of Mondrian, but more playful and less dogmatic. Art is not about answers, it’s about the questions we ask and the conversations we have along the way.