Red 1988

Ed Clark made this untitled painting, ‘Red,’ with broad, gestural strokes of color. I can imagine him, standing or maybe kneeling, with his arm extended, pushing the paint across the surface, trusting the movement. The painting is divided into horizontal bands of color, a thick vivid red at the top, then a band of grey, and a darker, almost black area at the bottom, like a landscape. I think about Ed Clark and his interest in color field painting. The red here is so dominant. It feels like a raw emotion, maybe anger or passion, but also there’s a calmness to it. I wonder if he was thinking about Mark Rothko, who also used fields of color to evoke emotional states. The way the colors blend and bleed into each other is fascinating. It's as if the painting is still in the process of becoming. This work reminds us that painting is an ongoing conversation between artists across time, each inspiring the other to explore new ways of seeing and feeling.