Abstract Painting c. 1982

Andy Warhol made this abstract painting with confident sweeping gestures in a soft yet assertive pastel palette. I imagine him standing before the canvas, layering and scraping, adding and subtracting. You can almost feel the artist’s hand moving across the surface with its rhythmic, dance-like quality. The drips and splatters add to this sense of immediacy and movement. The paint seems thinly applied, allowing the texture of the canvas to peek through in places. These various marks communicate feeling, intention, and, dare I say, meaning. Warhol mostly played with hard-edged pop art imagery. It’s interesting to see him explore the abstract expressionist tradition, but perhaps it isn’t all that surprising. I think artists are always in conversation and exchange of ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. In painting, we can embrace ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations.