Space Divided by Line Motive 1943

Arthur Dove made this painting, "Space Divided by Line Motive," with oil on canvas. I can only imagine what it might have been like for him, wrestling with those shapes, trying to get them just right. Looking at the dominant shapes, I see these zig-zagging lines cutting through fields of color – red, blue, yellow, green. It’s kind of like the painting came into being through trial and error, a shifting and emerging process. I sympathize with Dove, trying to balance the composition, maybe thinking about how each color pushes and pulls against the others. The paint looks kind of thin, like he was really working the surface, trying to find that perfect tension. It's as if he's got a set of landscape forms pushing against the boundaries of abstraction. Artists are always in conversation, you know? An ongoing exchange of ideas across time, inspiring each other's creativity. Painting’s an embodied expression, it embraces ambiguity. There are always multiple ways to read things.