Canal to the Sky 1961

Grace Hartigan made this print, Canal to the Sky, on paper, sometime in the 20th Century. I love how she used these blocks of color, yellow and green, against the raw paper, as a ground for these black gestural marks. It’s like she’s inviting us to witness her process, not hiding the raw materials, but making them part of the conversation. Hartigan's textures are fascinating. The contrast between the flat blocks of color and the scratchy, energetic lines creates a real push and pull. Look at the bottom of the picture: the heavy black marks almost seem to want to weigh the image down, and then they reach upward, suggesting these towers, or reaching up, toward that sky. For me, Hartigan’s work feels like a close cousin to Joan Mitchell’s, both diving headfirst into abstraction with a fearlessness that’s just so inspiring. It’s a reminder that art is an ongoing dialogue, a conversation across generations. There’s no one way to interpret it. It’s always about the exchange.