Desert Pass 1976

Helen Frankenthaler made 'Desert Pass' with fluid gestures, mainly using yellows, browns, and some brick-red tones. I imagine her process was one of laying down washes of thinned paint, letting them soak into the canvas, maybe tilting it to guide the flow. You can almost see her there, can’t you? Squinting, stepping back, and then diving in again, making decisions on the fly. The paint is so thin, staining the canvas rather than sitting on top, which gives it this ethereal quality. That horizontal band of brick red, slightly off-center with a brown dot—it's like a horizon line, but also not quite. It feels like a landscape, but one that’s filtered through memory. It’s not a straightforward representation; it's more about the feeling of being in a place. Frankenthaler and other artists are always in dialogue, you know, pushing and pulling at the boundaries of what painting can be. Here, she’s not trying to give us answers, but opening up a space for contemplation and a world of possibilities.