Untitled 1990

Sam Francis made this unnamed piece with paint, pure and simple, and what a riot of color! It looks like he was having a total blast, just letting the paint fly and drip where it may. The surface here is all about the joy of the medium. The paint is thin, almost like watercolor, allowing the white of the canvas to peek through, giving it a lightness and airiness. Look at the splatters of cobalt blue and cadmium yellow near the bottom – they create this fantastic energy, like a spontaneous explosion of color. That big, almost bruised purple shape in the center? It anchors the whole piece, but even that feels like it's in motion, dissolving at the edges. Francis reminds me a bit of Joan Mitchell, another painter who knew how to let color sing and dance across the canvas. But where Mitchell is all about layering and building up, Francis feels more immediate, more like a snapshot of a fleeting moment. It's about embracing the mess, the happy accidents, and letting the painting be what it wants to be.