Composition 1988

Sam Francis made this painting, Composition, with what looks like ink or very fluid acrylic on paper. The way he lets the paint drip and run—that’s process, right there. I like how the colors are so bold, almost primary. It's like he's not trying to mix them so much as just letting them hang out together on the page. Look at the way the blue kind of bleeds into the white, making these soft edges. And then there are these splatters of paint, like he just flicked his brush at the paper. It’s all so immediate, so in the moment. It makes me think of Joan Mitchell, another painter who wasn’t afraid to get messy and let the paint do its thing. But where Mitchell is all about these big, gestural strokes, Francis is more about the drip and the stain. In the end, art is just a conversation, right? A back-and-forth between artists, across time and space. And it’s not about getting it “right,” but about exploring the possibilities.