Untitled #2 1981

This is one of Agnes Martin’s delicate, grid-like paintings, made with acrylic and graphite on canvas. Look at the horizontal lines, some pale blue, some light brown, suspended on a hazy white ground. I wonder what it felt like to make this? Martin painstakingly drew each line, creating subtle variations in tone and thickness. There’s a beautiful, almost meditative quality to the repetition. Yet, when you get up close, you can see the tiny imperfections—the slight wobbles, the breaks in the lines. These imperfections are what makes the painting so human, so alive. Martin’s work reminds me a little of Sol LeWitt’s, but where he was all about rigorous systems, she was more about feeling. In her work, you can sense a deep connection to nature, to the vastness of the sky and the stillness of the desert. Agnes’s paintings give us the opportunity to slow down, to breathe, and to appreciate the subtle beauty of the world around us.