Untitled #2 (Sausalito) 1949

Richard Diebenkorn built this painting, Untitled #2, out of oil on canvas, and wow, what a conversation! The ochre, orange and red fields feel like emotional states. I can almost see him, brush in hand, layering the paint, responding to the emerging composition. It's like a game of visual tag, each color chasing and defining the next. And the circles, these soft orbs of color—they look like they are lifted from the early days of abstraction! I think of Hilma af Klint who was also interested in the power of simple forms, her paintings often spiritual in nature. These painters are all in some sort of dialogue through mark-making, color, and a shared language of gesture. Painting becomes a kind of embodied expression, embracing uncertainty, where multiple interpretations and meanings can come from the same image.