Untitled 1984

Doug Ohlson made this 'Untitled' painting sometime in his life with, it seems, simple blocks of color, probably in acrylic. The way the colors sit together, it feels almost like a plan for something else, but it has this funny completeness to it. What strikes me is the surface. It's not trying to hide its material qualities at all. You can see the weave of the canvas right through the paint, that subtle, horizontal texture. And then there’s the way the colors are next to each other – not blending, but bumping into each other like polite strangers. See that lavender block? It's not a flat, dead color. It has depth, variation, like it was built up in layers. And it really sings against that muted grey. It kind of reminds me of Agnes Martin, with her quiet, meditative grids and fields of color. But where Martin is all about transcendence, Ohlson feels more grounded, more about the here and now of painting itself. Like it's asking: what can color do, right here, right now?