Ice Blue 1972

Terry Frost made 'Ice Blue', an abstract print, sometime in the mid to late 20th century. Look at how he orchestrates these shapes, each one a distinct color bounded by a clean, white edge, almost like pieces of a puzzle floating in an ice blue space. It's as if Frost is saying, "Here are the parts, now you make the whole." The surface has this amazing flatness, a result of the printmaking process. Each shape is so distinctly itself but also relies on the next to create a sense of movement. Focus on the relationship between the black shape and the blue, see how the blue nudges the black forward, giving it depth while maintaining its sharp edge? It’s a conversation between color and form. Frost, with his background in St. Ives, was always playing with abstraction and its ties to the natural world. You might see echoes of Matisse in this work, that same joy in color and simplification of form. It’s like a visual poem, Frost invites us to see the world anew, one color, one shape at a time.