Delirious Hem 1995

Ellen Gallagher made Delirious Hem using ink, graphite, and paper. I imagine Gallagher in the studio, layering horizontal lines to make these large, curving blocks. It must have been repetitive labor, almost like writing, and she’s been thinking about Agnes Martin, I’m sure. But then Gallagher adds these little motifs around the edges, which seem to disrupt the order of the painted bands. Their blobby circular forms break the grid in a really interesting way. Those shapes, so tactile, so full of wobble, feel very personal. I wonder if she thought of them as a kind of anti-grid. Maybe they’re a kind of relief from the labor, a pause for the eye, a visual stutter in the rhythm of the painting. All painters are in conversation with each other and themselves, using the medium to find new ways of seeing. And the real beauty of painting is its ambiguity – it embraces the unexpected. It’s not about answers, it's about possibilities.