Untitled 1993

Sean Scully made this untitled watercolor in 1993, and what grabs me first is how the loose grid of blocky forms creates a sense of playful order. The colors are muted, earthy – blacks and ochres against stripes of red and grey. They don’t quite line up, which makes the whole thing breathe. You can see the watermarks, the edges of the strokes, where one color bleeds into another. This isn’t about perfection; it’s about the process, the gesture. Look at the top left, the gentle layering of yellow underneath the black, creating that depth of color. Scully, like Agnes Martin or Sol Lewitt, uses simple forms to explore deeper ideas. But while Lewitt aimed for mechanical precision, Scully embraces the imperfections of the hand. There’s a conversation happening here, across time and between artists, about how we make meaning through simple acts of making. It's like he's saying, "Here is one idea... and also, here is another."