Early Morning Garden 1957

Perle Fine made this painting “Early Morning Garden” with a limited palette of black, white, and gray, plus some pinkish tan, and I imagine the process was all about paring down to essentials. When I look at this work, I think about what it means to create space. Like, what does a "garden" mean as a painting? Fine’s painting is a place where lines act like boundaries or structures, but also like wild tendrils reaching out. The shapes feel both solid and ephemeral, as though the garden is half-there, half-dreamed. There is an area of dark, thick brushstrokes in the middle ground, like a shadow or a dense cluster of foliage. I can imagine Fine standing before the canvas, thinking about the tradition of landscape, and how to remake it on her own terms. She was in dialogue with other abstract expressionists like de Kooning and Kline, who were also dismantling and reassembling the world through paint. I feel lucky to be part of this ongoing conversation between artists!