Untitled [abstraction] 1986

Richard Diebenkorn made this untitled abstraction on paper, and the way he's layered the colours really grabs me; it’s like watching him think. The yellow isn’t just flat, it’s built up, almost sculpted with these circular gestures. You can practically feel the texture, thick and almost curdled in places, then scraped back to reveal glimpses of what's underneath, like that ghostly glimpse of text peeking through, remnants of a past life. It's like he’s digging into the surface to find something, and that one little drop of teal in the yellow? It's like a punctuation mark. A breath. This piece reminds me of work by Philip Guston, in how it fearlessly embraces imperfection and process. It’s this ongoing conversation, an artist speaking to artists, across time, saying: "Here’s what I found, what do you think?" Art isn't about answers, it's about keeping the questions alive.