Large Bright Blue 1980

Richard Diebenkorn made this print, Large Bright Blue, with aquatint and etching. I love to think about how the artist worked on this, moving between states, shifting and adjusting shapes, like you or I might move furniture around a room. And that bright blue! It's almost like looking into deep water. Did you notice the ghostlike forms lurking beneath the surface? To me, they read as traces of forms and shapes that the artist has overpainted, burying one thing beneath another. I imagine that Diebenkorn was searching, like many of us do when we paint, trying to uncover something elusive that is always slightly out of reach. I see in this artwork the same spirit of inquiry and searching that is present in the work of other painters such as Matisse. Artists are always having a conversation with one another across time, inspiring each other's creativity and ways of seeing.