Untitled 1968

This Untitled painting was made by Mark Rothko, and you can see how he’s using the oil paint to create these soft-edged blocks of colour. It’s a process of layering and building up the surface, a bit like how memories accumulate over time, blurring the sharp edges. The way Rothko handles the paint is really interesting; it’s neither thick nor thin, but somewhere in between. The yellow is applied with visible brushstrokes, giving it a kind of luminous texture, a real presence that almost feels like a light source within the painting. Then you have this grounding in blue, the way it bleeds into itself, a mood that's both calming and intense. I’m thinking about Barnett Newman, his contemporary who explored similar ideas with colour and space. But Rothko has something else, a kind of emotional depth that invites you to dive in and find your own meaning. And that's what makes art so exciting, right? It's this ongoing conversation where there are no right or wrong answers, just different ways of seeing.